Sarah Slattery

It's over on the east course near the Spanish border.

But I think what struck me is that it doesn't look like a resort.

It looks more like a town.

And then you've got this, I suppose, the beach, the 11 kilometre stretch of long sandy beach, this island beach that spreads out from it.

But yeah, I think it's just not your typical Portuguese Algarve resort.

So that's probably what makes it so.

I'm sorry now, I shouldn't be mentioning it at all.

Yeah, Ilderay, again, it's probably one of these places that during July, August, it's going to be really busy and prices are going to be very high.

But because there's fantastic access, there's four times weekly flights from Dublin to La Rochelle and twice weekly from Cork.

So it's really great to visit off season.

It's a gorgeous little place.

I suppose chic French island, you know.

What's really nice about it is you fly into La Rochelle, 20 minutes drive, you cross this bridge onto the island.

And once you're on the island, then most people tend to cycle everywhere.

It's a really cool kind of cycling culture.

Gorgeous little towns, whitewashed villages with colourful shutters.

great for surfing fabulous restaurants but very much kind of a chic French style island upmarket you know mostly couples families and again just really nice place to visit particularly off season for a couple even for a short break I looked at actually Cone one year I had to cancel for a solo trip I think it would be a really nice little place for some of you it would be really safe small island you'd be able to kind of get around explore everything on your bicycle and just thought it was a really kind of nice one to mention

Yeah, I mean, I suppose, you know, the looking of the time I was looking at, May, June or September was perfect.

July and August, it can get really busy.

But I think you could still get lucky, you know, early September with weather there.