“Great hideaway”

Pleasant hotel where all the basic amenities are in place. Mr and Mme Séguin are super-friendly and helpful. The hotel is within walking distance of a lovely beach, and when I was there in mid-July, Notre Dame des Monts, unlike other places in Vendée, was not over-run with tourists. Most tourists... more

Pleasant hotel where all the basic amenities are in place. Mr and Mme Séguin are super-friendly and helpful. The hotel is within walking distance of a lovely beach, and when I was there in mid-July, Notre Dame des Monts, unlike other places in Vendée, was not over-run with tourists. Most tourists French (families and older tourists). Nice pool.

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“Nice four day stop over”

Nice clean basic hotel, we stayed here for four nights which was really enough. Serviced clean rooms, we stayed on ground floor with small patio area to each room. We came to Notra Dame de Monts having holidayed here 15 odd years ago with our children, still a lovely area with predominantly Fren... more

Nice clean basic hotel, we stayed here for four nights which was really enough. Serviced clean rooms, we stayed on ground floor with small patio area to each room. We came to Notra Dame de Monts having holidayed here 15 odd years ago with our children, still a lovely area with predominantly French holiday makers which in itself lovely. Beautiful sandy beaches, peaceful pine forest walks, and lovely restaurants etc. The hotel fitted our bill fairly well, although we arrived after a long drive at 3pm and could not check in until 5pm as reception was closed. This was on the booking instructions, but on the request page I did inform we would be arriving slightly earlier but had no reply to this request. Rooms very basic but it was clean and beds made each day etc. The only suggestion I would make for improvement was there was no fridge in room, a little disappointing as we sat on patio after a hot day on beach and would have been lovely to pour a cold beer/glass of wine! The owners did in fact chill a bottle for us but it had to be planned before we left in the morning and a bit of a pain. Grass area in front of our patio a bit of a mess and could easily of had a cut to tidy up. Pool clean and tidy and very pleasant after a day at the beach 10 mins walk away. Well worth having breakfast for 9 euros as could have as much as you like and set you up for the day! If we returned to the area I would still give it a go as a one night stop.

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“Best West Coast stop-over”

We were driving back to Caen from the very south west of France and needed to break our journey north. So we looked at the map and decided that Notre Dame du Mont was the best location. Doing very little research into the area we booked a night at the L'Oree du Bois and left it that until our dri... more

We were driving back to Caen from the very south west of France and needed to break our journey north. So we looked at the map and decided that Notre Dame du Mont was the best location. Doing very little research into the area we booked a night at the L'Oree du Bois and left it that until our drive north. The hotel is fairly basic - but clean sheets, ensuite shower, shutters for stopping the morning sun glaring into the room - helped to raise the standards... It also has a pool which is always welcome after a 6 hour drive in the blazing hot sun. The staff were polite and helpful - for some reason they'd lost our key so we had to loiter a bit when we were checking in. Which really isn't a big deal. The four of us (two adults two children) were sharing a family room. I was glad to not have booked in for a week, in that room, as it was really too small for a regular length holiday. For an overnight journey breaker though, it was great, and hit the spot. We jumped straight into the pool and freshened up before heading into the town (not far away but we drove as we were pretty tired and needed to get some food rather than walk for 30 minutes). Notre Dame seems pretty untouched by the ruinous hand of British tourism... There were no "fish and chips" or "english breakfast all day" cafes - just really good looking french restaurants, mainly filled with French families on their holidays. (We did spot a few Brits but only from a distance... - not like going to Caracassonne where every person is NOT French...). We had a delicious meal in a buzzing restaurant on the main strip, about 50metres back from the sea front... I had the best Fruites-des-Mers pasta, my husband hoovered up a steak and the girls had a childrens' menu that seemed to mostly hit the spot. The house wine was excellent - both in taste and value. We all slept fairly fitfully as the room was quite muggy - no aircon and not really a proper window (just the double doors / shutters), and the beds were quite crammed together... We chose not to spend E10 (per head) on breakfast as it was a simple buffet with machine-coffee (i.e. quite plastic). Instead we headed back to the beach, loaded up with brioche and found the cafe ON the beach - drank coffee, orangina, ate bread, and then went and lazed on the beach for a few hours before heading off to Caen. L'Oree du Bois - it's fairly good value - E110 for four people in a room - it's basic, clean, quiet, has a nice pool, friendly staff - but it's definitely no frills. Perfect for one night to break up the monotony of the autoroute heading north and south. Notre Dame is a really cracking little seaside town and I would happily spend a week there in a self-catering house, going to any of the scrummy looking restaurants on the unbelievably expansive seafront. Merci!

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