Planes

La Rochelle Airport is just across the water, with flights arriving from major cities throughout Europe. The relatively new bridge means you can be on the island in around 15 minutes by taxi. The hotel can arrange airport transfers for €60 one way.

Trains

It’s roughly three hours by train from Paris Gare du Nord to La Rochelle railway station. From there, the hotel can arrange a transfer (€120 one way), or you can take a cab or bus, although beware that the bus stops at every village on the island and doesn’t actually enter the ancient walls of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, instead stopping near a car park just outside.

Automobiles

There are vehicles on the island but the preferred mode of transport by virtually everyone is bicycle (even dogs are towed in little carriages by their cyclist owners).

Worth Getting Out of Bed For

A well-marked lattice of cycle paths through salt marshes (the un-manned salt wagons at their perimeter work on an honesty-bar basis), vineyards and pine forest link the popular (as well as less visited) beaches with the handful-or-so sleepy villages on this entirely level, 30-kilometre-long island, and every few miles you’ll be tempted to dismount at the copious little oyster shacks lining the routes. In fact, few places are more geared up for the dual pleasures of cycling and oyster-quaffing than Île de Ré. Villa Clarisse has partnered with YooToo, an excellent rental cabin (where you’ll get 10 per cent off), from which you can choose push bike or e-bike, with or without baskets.

The hotel is set in the island’s principal town, Saint-Martin-de-Ré, the entrance into which is through the ornate Portes des Campani and whose sea-lapped 17th-century ramparts were designed by Vauban and make for a pleasant after-dinner stroll. Pay a visit to the Ernest Cognacq Museum at the far end of town for more local-history tidbits. Grab a packed lunch of warm baguettes, local cheese, lamb stew or garlicky herring salad from the town’s covered market. Or, for an eye-popping prototype of the mediaeval marché of your dreams, head to the neighbouring port town of La Flotte. We could spend an entire day at bountiful La Flotte market sampling the suckling pig, salted fish, potato salad and other treats entirely unique to this corner of France. Expect queues at the shops around its perimeter, too, such as for bread and pastries at Boulangerie Feuillette.

With your bike basket bursting with cheese and baguettes, you’re ready to pedal proudly to the beach. To the south, beyond the village of Le Bois-Plage-en-Ré, lies the lengthy, fairly popular Plage des Gollandières. To the west, through the cheerful labyrinth of salt marshes, is the quiet village of Loix and its wind-sheltered Plage du Grouin. As is often the case with beaches, you’ll be rewarded the further you go. It’s a day’s very pleasant cycling to and from the island’s north-east peninsula where you’ll find some of Île de Ré’s finest, and most desolate: Plage de Trousse-Chemise and Plage de la Patache being the most appealing – as well as Le Phare de Ré, a historic lighthouse and by far the island’s tallest viewing platform (very little else reaches higher than two storeys).

If you fancy a break from the isle’s quietude, you can always hop over the bridge for lunch or dinner in La Rochelle, whose quaint, restaurant-and-bar-lined harbour has the feel of a metropolis compared to the willful sleepiness of Île de Ré.