Local trips & West Coast @ La Rochelle

Well once again time has moved on very quickly & I find myself lagging well behind with my publishing.
It was a breath of fresh air having Harry & Heather our "new"friends from Wagga. What a background he has had, firstly in the bank then as a auctioneer for cattle & sheep, he has had a stint in the US as a cowboy for 12mths in Wyoming & on a whim he flew to Alaska to work only to find out that the guy was lieing & that he was the only white man there & told that he wasn't welcome so he spent the night in a sleeping bag on the airport runway waiting for the plane out, what an experience.He has also driven cattle right up through to Darwin-what a life.

These days he is an electrician in Wagga running his own business & has done plenty of work for Kerin & Joe ( the owners of Mareuil ) so hence the trip to France. While H & H made the most of their time in their time in the Loire discovering the more fancied Chateaux like Cheverny, Chambord, Chenonceau,Chaumont & Valencay.

We opted to do some day trips around this general area discovering little gems like Montresor ( pic with little stream ) with its powerful fortress built about 1005AD by Foulques Nerra,
Duke of Anjou, while the Chateau we see today with its double ramparts surrounding it was built in 1483AD. In 1849 a Polish nobleman Count Xavier Branicki acquired the castle which he restores & endows with an impressive collection of works of art.

Descendants of the Count still own & live in the grounds of the Chateau today & use the revenue from visitors to maintain the Chateau, the village is also very pretty in fact voted one of the best in France. While in Montresor we were told to visit the Saturday market ( marche ) at Loches as it is the best in the area.

A little N-E of here to the small village of Ferte-Imbault we came across an impressive Chateau made from bricks instead of stone, evidently the 1st castle was built back in 980AD but was partly destroyed during the 100years war with England.

It was re-built the brick in the Renaisance period & is the only one that we have seen so far. It is currently owned by a French architect who is renovating it a project expected to take him 6-10yrs & plenty of euros I expect.

We were up early to go to Loches & weren't disappointed arriving just after 9.00am, there were literally dozens of stalls selling all sorts of merchandise from cheese, pottery,different types of sausages, patisseries, all types of seafood & plenty of nick-nack stores. It was certainly worth the drive to see it, we continued on wandering around the quaint streets taking in the old church & Chateau before heading back just before the rain came.

Harry & Heather headed off on Mon.28th Aug. bound for Leige in Belgium to see his son who is an exchange student for a year so it will be nice for them to catch up after 6 mths.

The next couple of days saw us house-bound as it rained steadily the whole time. When it cleared we decided to take a trip to the coast to La Rochelle. We left at 10.00am & once again passed through some lovely little villages on the way, we took our time, arriving at about 4.00pm to our Chambres d'Hotes ( B & B ) at Cramchaban where we met our host Mdme Joubert.

After that we went visiting this most unusual area called Le Marais poitevin, which was formed years ago when the original coastline receded & left a marshy swampy area. Evidently Napoleon called in the Dutch( because of their experience with dykes , etc ) to transform into what it is today, a most amazing labyrinth of canals & waterways really fabulous. We took a 40 minute boat ride through this very peaceful & serene area. We then spent the rest of the afternoon driving through the various villages that dot the perimeter of the canals.

We were off & down into La Rochelle arriving at 9.30am, what a lovely coastal town this is with beautiful promenades lining the foreshore, quaint narrow streets, a lot with pedestrians only plus the old Port area lined by bars & restaurants a real holiday feel about it. We walked for quite some time before heading onto the neighboring island of Isle-de-Re.

After negociating the 4.5kms long bridge( which cost us E16.50 = $AU 28.00 ) we were onto the island. Going through the first housing estate we could see that it was very modern totally different to what we had experienced previously. The housing all around this area including La Rochelle had roof tiling more like one would expect in Spain a terracotta material, all other areas use the slate as a tiling medium.

Just looking at these properties you knew that they would be very expensive, we found out later that they start at about E500000.00 = $AU 850000.00 so a bit out of our league.
We made it to St.Martin-de-Re the main town & the only old part on the whole island, it was well worth the visit, even more narrow streets, plenty of shops for the tourists, cute Hotels placed right onto the harbour getting some great views.
After spending some time exploring this lovely village we made our way back to our very comfy accomodation, on the way we bought some food for our evening meal which we had outside with another couple staying at the house.

We headed off by 10.15am stopping at Partenay ( an medeival town ) on the way, being Saturday as usual things were quiet around town & being close to lunchtime shops were closing so not much going on. We stopped later at Tournon-St-Martin by the river to have our our sandwhich & patisserie before heading back to Mareuil, arriving at 5.00pm after a most interesting couple of days away. Until our next posting.