See Telegraph article extract below
Three generations, three different sets of needs, but for Sam Llewellyn and family the Vendée region had it all.

"Twenty-five years ago we had spent a happy holiday nearby en famille, bouncing around in the pine forests on the dunes"
By Sam Llewellyn
June 2013

Seaside holidays are hard to get right. Very small children wish to play on nice, safe beaches. Their parents, still young and full of vim, do not always wish to sit by the side of a rock pool agreeing with a two-year-old that it is deep. Grandparents, while by no means without vim themselves, have less objection to exploring the concept of deepness with people 60 years their junior.
So a three-generation beach holiday seemed like a good idea. We needed decent weather, tides big enough for rock pools, and waves big enough for surfing but not so big that they would sweep the little ones out to sea. There should also be sand dunes, pine trees and red squirrels.

The Vendée, the part of France just south of Brittany, has most of these attributes. It is unfashionable enough that in early September, after the frenzy of the French August has abated, a house sleeping 10 can be got for a sensible weekly rent.
One of the great advantages of this coast, though, is that the dunes behind the beach are a regional park, on which no building is permitted. We had taken the precaution of assuring ourselves that the house we had rented was a short walk from the sea, and under the eaves of the dune-woods. Having spent an afternoon provisioning in the Super U, we moved in.

And there was a long table shaded by a vine, at which the parents and the grandparents could drink vin rosé (the Provence model, and plan the assault on the sea.