KEY POINTS:
When you are born in a country surrounded by sea, there is nothing extraordinary about going to the beach. As New Zealanders, we take this for granted - the smell, the sight and feel of sand, salty water and wind. But a lot of French people are landlocked and for them a place such as the Ile de Ré near La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast, is nothing short of paradise.
I came here to visit my friend Margot, eat oysters and visit the beautiful villages and, if I were the tourism department, I would advise people to forget the rest (it is not a gastronomic paradise) and just do those three things in that order.
The advantage of knowing Margot is that she knows about everything that can be foraged, fished, scraped off rocks, yanked out of the ground, plucked from trees or nicked from the pretty passages that connect the little streets in the villages. She goes out with her orange scissors and comes back with wild rocket, mint, parsley, fennel, chives and dandelions. She prises oysters from the rocks with a screwdriver, gorges on mulberries from the huge trees all over the island, knows the fields where the littlest potatoes are left on top of the ground for anyone to have.
The Ile de Ré potatoes shouldn't really be called potatoes - so waxy, nutty and sweet are they, because of the sandy, dry soil.
If we need salicorns (a marsh plant) for our fish dishes, we jump on our bikes and pedal to the salt marshes to snip some - plump, briny and delicious. The best place to find it is on the sides of the deserted salt pans where sea salt used to be harvested. There was a time when the Rhetais (island people) were so poor, the two main crops were potatoes and salt.
The island with its slow, misty charm and low, white houses with regulation green or grey shutters, has become fashionable and the islanders have much better ways of making money, such as renting out their pretty cottages. There is still some salt harvested here, the most prized being the fleur de sel (the flower) which forms only in an easterly wind. This salt gathers on the surface of the water and is whiter and finer than regular sea salt.
In the right season you can also find wild cherries, leeks, mushrooms, asparagus, snails, squid and la friture (whitebait). The tiny fish are always tossed in flour, deep-fried and served with fleur de sel and lemons.
When you walk along the beaches at sunset you smell iodine, oysters and seaweed everywhere. The oysters are utterly fresh (no one would consider opening one in advance), not fatty and clean tasting. To eat an oyster in the soft light of a Rhetais sunset must surely be one of life's great experiences.