The Vendée in 5 days

A park of full-scale shows rather than rides: gladiators in a 6,000-seat arena, Vikings rising from the water, hundreds of birds of prey overhead.

The Vendée's only village among France's most beautiful, on a bend of the Mère, with the 13th-century Mélusine tower and a finely carved Romanesque church.

Glide by flat-bottomed boat through the Green Venice, a maze of canals dug by medieval monks, under pollarded ash trees with herons for company.

An abbey on a former island in the marsh, made a cathedral in the 14th century, where Rabelais stayed in the 1520s.

A 3 km curve of beach along the Remblai promenade and a working fishing port; every four years in November, the Vendée Globe starts here.

A sardine port at the mouth of the Vie, where the catch still lands from May to October, with the Vélodyssée cycle route nearby.

A 4.1 km causeway that floods at every high tide; drive or cycle it in a window of about three hours around low tide.

An island 17 km offshore, sandy in the north, granite in the south, with the Vieux-Château on its rock and the port of La Meule.