Eurocamp Monet

As we drove through the campsite barrier, rain began to pour down from leaden skies. Which was a bit much when we had just travelled 488 miles in search of sun as well as sea and sand. Huddled in the caravan that evening, it felt more like November than late May.

But we need not have worried. We awoke the next morning to a deep blue sky, with sun dappling through the trees and bushes - and so it remained for the rest of a relaxing week in the Vendee, on France's Atlantic coast.

We were staying with Eurocamp at Le Clarys Plage, just a couple of hundred yards from a massive expanse of white sandy beach and a few miles from the resort of St Jean De Monts.

We had come to the Vendee because I had calculated it was as far south as one could reasonably drive in two days, with the two hauls separated by a night on a Brittany Ferries crossing from Portsmouth to St Malo.

The crossing was a key part of the holiday (perhaps the highlight for my daughter, who much prefers ferries to cramped old aeroplanes). The huge vessel, the Val De Loire, had shops, restaurants, bars, a cinema and even a small swimming pool (disappointingly empty of water on this occasion though). We snuggled up in our cabin that night, with just a slight roll and the distant hum and vibration of the engines to send us off to sleep.

The Monet caravan was comfortably furnished with a fully-equipped kitchen, two bedrooms and a spacious sitting/dining room. The site was immaculately laid out with plenty of trees and shrubs to separate each pitch, a heated indoor and outdoor swimming pool, complete with a selection of modest slides and chutes, and there was even a Jacuzzi.

There was a good play area with table tennis, a bar where discos and karaoke evenings were held and a takeaway selling snacks such as pizzas and chips, although another highlight of the holiday for my daughter Gabrielle was getting out the barbecue and helping to cook supper for the family.

A Super-U supermarket, selling everything a camper might want including chicken and pork chops, was within easy walking distance, just beyond the site entrance.

The Vendee is famous for its beaches - magnificent stretches of fine sand - and we enjoyed relaxing on a few of them. It's a good area to chill out. But our explorations revealed that the area lacked the fine historic villages and towns that we have found in the past in other areas of France, such as Brittany, Provence and Languedoc.

But big, stylish coastal resorts such as St Jean De Monts - just a few miles away from the site - certainly offered good-quality shops, restaurants and bars, as well as huge beaches. And we did enjoy a trip to the Isles De Noirmoutier, a 20km-long island connected to the mainland by a causeway at low tide and a long toll bridge. It features dunes and marshes, and an attractive town with a 15th century chateau.

On another day, we went to Les Sables d'Olonne, the start and finish of the single-handed sailing race around the world, the Vendee Globe Challenge, famously won in record time by Ellen McArthur earlier last year.

Also worth a visit was Nantes, once the capital of Britanny, where its cathedral is situated in the medieval quarter.

Fact file

A week's stay in a Eurocamp Monet caravan this year costs from £394 off-season, including a Dover-Calais crossing, with an extra £214 to pay for a Portsmouth to St Malo crossing, including cabin. The price of a week would rise to £879 at peak times, including a Dover-Calais crossing.

Contact 0870 366 7552 for further details or a brochure.

To contact Britanny Ferries, call 08705 360360, or visit www.brittanyferries.com

Updated: 16:17 Friday, January 06, 2006