Why should I go now? It’s a fallacy that seasides are for summer. They are far better off-season, when you can keep your kit on and experience a coast unfiltered by froth and the nagging fear that the kids are drowning.

On a morning stroll along Les Sables-d’Olonne beach right now, you’ll see maybe one angler and a bescarved lady with a bounding terrier.

Standing on the breezy edge of infinity, you’ll feel small and vibrant, and wish that you, too, had brought a dog. Too bad. Standing and staring and almost alone, you are apparently privy to an elemental secret too big for words. And that’s gratification enough for the dogless.

Obviously, though, there are seasides and beaches all over, so why Les Sables? First, because we’ve been hearing a lot about the place lately, as single-handed sailors — including our own Dee Caffari and Samantha Davies — were blowing back towards the Vendée Globe yacht-race base after slogging around the world. The resort gains a certain spin-off celebrity.

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Second, the main beach is a belter — “The most beautiful in Europe” claim tourism authorities. Tourism people are always coming up with guff like that, on no known basis, but the two-mile curve of sand is indeed a terrifically satisfying hyphen between ocean and land. To the north and south, the coast grows wilder, with rocks, dunes and creeks where spring waves chuck spray in your face.

Just as important, Les Sables retains commercial and fishing ports, right in the town centre. Grain goes out, sole and sardines come in. So rooted life continues even when summer’s gone. There are proper seaside smells — diesel mixed with fish — on the salt air, and chunky blokes with yellow aprons knife turbot before going for a beer. This ensures fresh fish for the restaurants and a steady clientele for the bars.

Les Sables is in the Vendée, the most independent-minded province in all France. Bretons, Basques and Corsicans are more explosive about their identity, but it was the people of the Vendée who were slaughtered by the thousand for opposing the French revolution. Pragmatic self-sufficiency has since become their way. If they weren’t French, they could be British. We get on very well.

Since a direct TGV service from Paris started last December, the greener among us can get there in less than seven hours. Others might fly. Either way, I wouldn’t hesitate. Being in Les Sables now is like being in a theatre after the seasonal show is over. The scenery remains outstanding, the staff are more relaxed — and you have it all largely to yourself.

What should I do? Stroll the beach. That’s the whole point. It’s such glorious isolation, you might be tempted to leave your clothes in a heap, with a farewell note blaming the Royal Bank of Scotland. I wouldn’t, but I’m a coward (and I never had shares in RBS).

Back from the sand, the Remblai promenade once comprised fancy belle époque villas. In the 1960s and 1970s, many were flattened in favour of blocks of flats apparently built for the purpose of being blown up. It is de rigueur to regret this — but also wrong. It’s the price of democracy and sets an agreeable, popular tone for a place that has, thank the Lord, never mistaken itself for Monaco.

Anyway, the ground level is lively with bars — where staff are a sight more obliging off-season than when they’re flying around in August — and the grandeur can cope.

Round the corner is the fishing port. Now, as everyone knows, real fishing ports require tiny streets lined with small, lime-washed cottages from which big fishermen would burst, en route to Newfoundland and similar. Les Sables does this splendidly, especially in the Chaume district, across the port. A couple of rogue tuna could jam up the alleyways here for ages. My, but these people lived tight together. They still do, though from the pottery cats and flowers in evidence, I’d guess that fewer and fewer of them are fishermen.

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