The Bikepacker: Velofrancette 2026

Cycling Stats

Walking Route

Cycling Route So Far

Travelogue

Today is our final day in La Rochelle. We walked the city yesterday so decided that today, we'd jump on a ferry and visit the island Ile d'Aix which takes about hour and a quarter to get to. And that's what we did.

En route you get a close up view of a "fort in the sea" called Fort Boyard. It's an impressive building, originally created for defensive purposes, but has been more recently used as a prison and most recently as the location for a French TV show of the same name!

On arrival at Ile d'Aix at about midday, we immediately started walking along the coastal path. The majority of the hordes of tourists we'd travelled with or who has arrived on other ferries all seemed to head straight for one of half a dozen or so restaurants and sit down for lunch.

That said, on our 8 km walk, we were rarely alone. It's a small island and it's a wonder it didn't sink under the weight of all those tourists. There are plenty of homes on the island. It's hard to imagine it's a nice place to live in the summer.

On nearing the end of our walk, we'd become peckish and so sat down at a table outside one of the aforementioned restaurants. It was now 2 pm so there were tables free. We didn't want a meal so we just ordered a bowl of salad to share, two bowls of chips (french fries), a serving of homemade aioli and cold drinks. Our waitress also brought us a basket of crusty bread. This all went down very well indeed. And yet something was missing....

Ice cream! The restaurant had a number of awesome looking ice cream desserts available. M2 chose chocolate. I, M1, went for their best selling caramel version. No regrets. Delish.

We found a place to sit in the shade and read for a while and then walked to the quay where we expected to find our return ferry. It was absolutely heaving with tourists, definitely hundreds. And there was no information, despite there being multiple ferries coming and going. In fact, we nearly got on the wrong ferry! Luckily someone had managed to find out where our ferry would dock and so we moved to the right location and all was well.

We had a decent enough day but in truth felt that there was nothing special about Ile d'Aix.

We head north by train tomorrow.