Walk the sinuous shopping streets, past the first-class market, to the Abbaye Sainte-Croix museum (Rue de Verdun; 00 33-2 51 32 01 16, www.lessablesdolonne.fr ; afternoons only, £4), the sole cultural imperative in town. The museum makes much of its collections by Gaston Chaissac and the Romanian surrealist Victor Brauner, but they left me bemused. More rewarding were other contemporary works, notably by Jean Dubuffet, and cracking maritime pictures by a local artist, Paul-Emile Pajot, who, says the curator, Benoît Decron, “sold sardines, sang in bars, got plastered and painted boats”.

Out of town, northwards, the coast rapidly becomes Brittany lite — rugged, duned and backed by forest. It’s all accessible by bike along splendid cycleways. Hire pedals from Cycles Evasion (32 Avenue Alcide Gabaret; 02 51 20 15 64) and sing ho for exhilaration. Passing the marshes, you might pop into Les Salines (120 Route de l’Aubraie; 02 51 21 01 19, lessalines.fr), where they produce salt much as they’ve been doing for the past 2,000 years. It gives a historical perspective to the next heart attack.

If you still feel frisky, you can tackle most maritime sports at the Institut Sports Océan (1 Promenade Kennedy; 02 51 95 15 66, institutsportsocean.com ). If you don’t, have a drink before ambling along the front. Across the way, what’s left of the St-Clair fortress still guards the channel into the port. Nearby, they’ve just redone the walkway that served as a towpath in sailing days. “They got horses along that?” I asked. “Horses? You’re joking,” said a nearby local. “It was the women who did the towing.”

Where do I eat? There are few pleasures more intense than sitting in a portside fish restaurant awaiting fresh turbot. That’s a lie. There are many pleasures more intense. You could, for instance, have ordered the lobster. But turbot’s still pretty good. Tackle it at Le Cabestan (17 Quai Guiné; 02 51 95 07 50; lunch menus from £11).

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Best table around is Le Cayola (76 Promenade de Cayola, Château-d’Olonne; 02 51 22 01 01, le-cayola.com ; menus from £33), on a little headland overlooking the creek where Richard the Lionheart used to land, en route to his castle at Talmont. He’d have made short work of the john dory with asparagus. Well worth the 10-minute taxi ride.

It’s hard to bring fresh regional produce home, unless you can jam a squid into your hand luggage. So nip to La Sablaise (opposite the church, near the market), where the jars and cans of fishy and other preparations are first-rate. The finest local wines come from Domaine Saint-Nicolas (02 51 33 13 04, domainesaintnicolas.com). They’re biodynamic, too, so you shouldn’t be grumpy the morning after.

Where do I stay? The three-star Hôtel Arundel (8 Boulevard Franklin Roosevelt; 02 51 32 03 77, www.arundel-hotel.fr ; sea-view doubles from £75) looks very 1970s from without, but is well refurbished within, central and welcoming. Fifteen minutes from town, Domaine de Brandois (La Mothe-Achard; 02 51 06 24 24, domainedebrandois.com ; doubles from £80) is a sober little chateau surrounded by parkland, and in the grip of contemporary design that favours baths in the middle of bedrooms and slabs of matt colour where the family portraits once hung. It works a treat, provided you enjoy taking a bath with your travelling companion looking on. Excellent restaurant, too.

How do I get there? Rail Europe (0844 848 4070, raileurope.co.uk ) has returns from London via Paris from £105pp. Les Sables is roughly equidistant from Nantes, served by Ryanair (0871 246 0000, ryanair.com ), and La Rochelle, served by Flybe (0871 700 2000, flybe.com ), EasyJet (easyjet.com ), Jet2 (0871 226 1737, jet2.com ) and Ryanair.

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