Travel round the island and you pass villages of whitewashed houses with red terracotta tiles, blue shutters and swaying hollyhocks; salt pans where the drying salt glitters in the sunlight and canals that are now home to a huge variety of bird life; towering pine trees that are a distinctive symbol of the French Atlantic coast, as well as forests of oaks and mimosa trees which, thanks to the mild climate – the island is known for its micro-climate that makes it warmer by the coast – burst into a profusion of bright yellow in the earliest weeks of February when the trees flower.
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