Camping holiday information for the area in and around Camping St Gilles Croix de Vie, Vendee, Western France

St Gilles Croix is a nice little town which we have visited many times. Getting there initially is easy enough whichever ferry port you are coming from, but we have to assume that you will be arriving from a northern port and so will be circumnavigating Nantes on your journey. Saint Gilles lies between St Jean-de-Monts and Les Sables-d’Olonne.

First of all get onto the Nantes peripherique or ring road and follow signs for Bordeaux, exiting the peripherique at junction 48. To avoid paying autoroute fees you need to get onto the D178/D177 and head for Challans where you can either pick up the D32 to St Hilaire and St Gilles by going through the town or bypass Challans altogether and carry on the D753 where you will turn off onto the D59 to St Hilaire and St Gilles after a few KM. Tis easy peasy.

Camping sites are like fleas on a dog's back around St Gilles Croix, which lies between St Jean-de-Monts and Les Sables-d’Olonne, and in season you will see a serious amount of other Brits, so if your wish is to avoid other people's ghastly, badly brought up children then this is not the place for you, or me for that matter, but there again, if we thought like that there would be no holidays for any of us.

The town itself is delightful and has a really wide main shopping street which culminates in a square where there are more shops, restaurants and thankfully a public toilet. The shopkeepers here are very much into siesta mode for a couple of hours at lunchtime so you need to get there before or after lunch to do the place justice. There is some industry here but in all fairness they have kept it to one side of the town near to the railway tracks.

Parking is always a concern to Brits, mainly because it is such a problem here in the UK and we believe that it will be so wherever we go on holiday. Parking in St Gilles croix is not at all difficult, espacially if you approach from the St Hilaire end. Just carry on until you get to a small fairground which seems to be working all summer, turn left and on your right hand side there is a large car park. Personally, I have never paid to park here because for several years the Pay & Display machines have been out of order, and long may that continue!

St Gilles has three and a half kilometres of sandy beach - the main one being on the north side of the Vie estuary, and on the south side you can find a delightful maze of old fisherman’s cottages set in between the port and the shopping area. Tis all very nice and it's easy to see why anyone would take a camping holiday in this lovely region of the Vendee.