Vendee, St Jean de Monts, Les Amiaux

LES AMIEUX Just got back from two glorious weeks at the site, perfect for the family seeking a safe environment, good swimming pools, nice clean basic mobile home with nice size hedges to keep you private. This is a family site, so don't expect silence and you will have to compete for a sunbed. However the children do need to be entertained and there was no shortage of friends for them to play with, leaving me and the wife with our feet up enjoying the sunshine. Well positioned for the beach and a cyclists heaven!

It is a family site and that comes with a certain amount of making do, that said if you can live with a little sharing and having to say hello and speaking with your neighbours. Then i am sure you will have the most pleasant fortnight like we had, weather providing.

After all the bad reviews I was expecting the worst, BUT St Jean de Monts, Les Amiaux is not as bad as portrayed. The pools were good, Ok not the best lifeguarding, the bar was expensive but no more than others, just buy elsewhere and drink outside the van. Great location just north of St Jean. Good access to the Vendee cycle path at the back. This is as good as other sites we have stayed at (9 years of visits) and worth considering.

We visited Vendee, St Jean de Monts, Les Amiaux this year (Aug) for a week and a day (to made clear why later) and was very pleased with it indeed. it's a very clean and well organized site, is a little on the costly side as far as the shop, bar and take out are concerned though.

All facilities are clean and well looked after. The staff at times were "by the book" but on the whole easy going and coped even with my (really) bad french and when I gave up and resorted to english - the staff replied in english.

The atmosphere was good, and we found the staff really pleasant, and helpful - which we found out on the day that we had to cut short our stay due to a death of a close relative. The staff tried as hard as us to get in touch with our ferry operator to re-schedule our return home (and failed - just as we had)

We shall be booking Les Amiaux next year.

Just got back from Les Amiaux. Never again!

We reached the site at 10.45 pm off a ryanair flight. The reception staff were hard to find but by the time we found someone, who didnt speak a word of english, it was 11pm and the barrier was down and they refused to open it to let us in. So we had to carry all our bags and find the caravan ourselves. No help offered.

A catalogue of errors followed, including being asked to leave the bar while on my laptop unless I bought another overpriced drink. Reception wouldnt let us use their fax or printer to print our documents for the flights we booked to come home early. They sent us to St Hilair De Riez to the Tourist Info office to use their printer and yes, youve guessed it, no english spoken!!!! English is a first language for most people and with the amount of english tourists some should be spoken. My Daughter, who was really bored on the site borrowed a cheap pen from reception and was chased around the campsite to give it back. We only stayed one week instead of two. We took our own carrier bag into the shop on site, which had been bought there the day before and the girl on the till was pulling it off us to scan,despite us trying to explain we had bought it previously! She even told me to empty my basket onto the conveyor belt in a nasty tone, I think the english speaking receptionist must have left because we certainly couldnt find anyone who spoke english!

The campsite itself was fair, not much in the way of entertainment, one evening was board games, or should that be bored games?! I have travelled to the U.S. and the Caribbean, to Spain and the Canaries to the West Indies and Cyprus, Turkey etc and found the people welcoming and helpful and that wasnt in hotels, just self catering. I will never return to France.

Les Amiaux is overpriced, Customer service is non existent and I wouldnt recommend it to anybody.

Having read some of the reviews I must be visiting a different site. We have been going to Vendee, St Jean de Monts, Les Amiaux for the last 5 years, this is a fantastic site, clean, large private pitches, friendly staff, not expensive, great location, totally relaxing. We visit at the start of the season June/July so have never seen the site full, I could imagine in August when its packed then I would see the site in a different light, which is why I don't go in August. If you want the kids entertained and noisey pub/disco's then go to Haven, if you have sulky teenagers go to Haven, but if you have young children, a dog, or like us are travelling with no kids (heaven) then this is the site for you. Regarding the site manager/owner, yes he doesn't speak english, but then we are in France and I don't speak french, the receptionist speak perfect english. The whole area around St Jeans is made for a relaxing holday, but if you want adventure there is plenty if you look for it. At the end of the day it is a caravan/camping site not a hotel, but then some people will never be pleased.

We have holidayed on this site from 1997 nearly every year, the staff were always very helpful and the manager doesn't have any confidence in speaking English but always went out of his way to help. We even left a site down in Bordeaux that the staff were horrible and drove back up to here where we knew there would be a welcome!! My children aging from 15, 13, 10 9, would totally recomend the pools disco and campsite. I don't believe for one minute that the manager would not change a pitch because we were always brought to our pitch first to make sure we were happy with it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My husband likes to show our children around France if not we would spend all our holidays on this site. Really friendly and safe for children. Also 11pm is silence until 7am.

If you like Butlins by the Sea, this is definitely the place to be! We should have stayed 7 nights, but only stayed one, that's how good the pitch was!! We had asked for a large pitch as we had a twin axle, this was booked months previously, but we were given a very small and tight space. We were also parked next to the 'dog poo' tree, where every dog on site must have been to do a 'poo'!! We asked could we be moved. but the Site Manager was incredibly unhelpful. So we moved ourselves the next morning. Overall, the toilets were dirty, the showers had no pressure, the pool was dirty, no toilet paper, no plugs in wash basins. What better advert, but to leave and move to the Loire.

We booked this holiday through Sandpiper on the recommendation of friends. Vacansoleil bought Sandpiper out in the meantime and moved the caravans around which left us on the edge of the main thoroughfare opposite a toddler park which became a meeting place for teenagers throughout every single night of our stay. Despite complaints from us and other holidaymakers the site did nothing and it was up to us to move them on every night, sometimes several times.

We drove to the beach as the brochure said 750m, but after spending an hour walking and looking for it we gave in. The site is on a main road with dozens of other sites and we sat gridlocked in traffic for at least 15 minutes every time we left the site to go anywhere. With kids you cannot walk to the town centre as its too far. We didn't use the entertainment, it was £5 a pint and the entertainers sounded awful. They had a tennis court and table tennis tables but you couldn't hire equipment you had to buy it!!

Would I go back? No, it was far too stressful, though the Vacansoleil reps were lovely and friendly and tried to help as best they could.

I would recommend this site to anyone with children. If you are after noisy late night entertainment then it probably won't be for you. There are excellent beaches close by so our choice not to use the pool did not hamper the holiday. I had read reviews from people before we left, some complaining about the condition of toilets or location of the tent but to be honest these were unfounded. As someone who is fussy, both myself and my wife could find no fault with the toilets or showers. In fact, there are so many available you have a choice. If they were left a little grotty it was usually down to a child having used them. Besides, they were cleaned every morning and evening. There are supermarkets close by and the location is great for visiting other places - I would recommend La Rochelle - takes a couple of hours by car but well worth the trip. I suspect those that have been unhappy on repeat visits will have not gone through their operator and booked direct as Canvass certainly had the best pitches on the quiet side of the site. So you have to weigh up I guess whether any savings are worth doing this. We will certainly be going next year albeit probably not from Calais as the drive with children was too long. St Malo appears a better option.

This was our first and last holiday of this kind and at £1700 we could have rented a villa for far less. The pools were dingy, overcrowded and couldn't see any lifeguards. Plus unsuitable depths for small children despite the site being advertised as ideal for school-age children. The entertainment was a French clown who spewed a monologue, threw a teddy in the air then went off. Awful. The kid's disco was one (embarassed) man and his headset who clearly wanted to be somewhere far more glamourous and offered not one word of encouragement to entice the little ones up to dance. The floor was deserted and a ring of disappointed faces surrounded it.

I cannot describe properly what a disappointment this was. Choose another place.