Route details
Description
Your itinerary
Step 1
The town of Magné, an island bordered by the Sèvre Niortaise and its tributary the Sevreau, has thrown four bridges over the waterways, the most characteristic of which is the metal drawbridge, witness to the golden age of river trade in the 19th century. This traffic made it possible to export pottery, an old local industry fueled by marine debris, clay from the marshes. The holds were used to hang the "batais" (traditional flat-bottomed boats). There were several in the village.
Step 2
The use of the wooden bridge, built in 1853 to replace the ferry, was prohibited in 1896 following the breakage of an oak plank constituting the deck, under the passage of a heavy cart. The current metal drawbridge dating from 1901 supports a load of 10 t. Its mobile part allows boats to pass which once used 9 dam-locks from Niort to Marans in order to export salt, wine, eels and pottery. It is one of the four bridges which provide access to the island of Magné. Before its construction, the journey was paid for, provided by a ferryman.
In 1800, the prefect Dupin wrote: Merchants from Limoges and Blanc came to buy the eels which they took in 10 or 15 cartloads at a time. Magné pottery was an old local industry that produced utilitarian and decorative objects, as well as devotional items sold at the pèles
Step 3
Chain boats are part of the market garden landscape. Magné's was replaced in 2014 by an aluminum model. Thanks to their two tow chains which connect the boat to the bank, everyone is free to cross the Sèvre as they wish.
Step 4
This work dates from the 2016th century and was restored in XNUMX.
This place includes a lock keeper's house from 1865 which, unoccupied since 1987, was sold in 2007 by the Equipment department, and a dam-lock with fish pass. The latter allows many fish to continue their migration up the river.
Nearby is the rickety mound whose legend from the end of the 19th century says that the unstable ground swallowed up unlucky travelers into the swamps! In fact, the motte, an elevated plot surrounded by ditches (canals) for cultivating the farm's vegetables, wavers under the weight of its visitors, especially during floods.
Manual lock with semi-automated operation (without remote control), or portage.
Step 5
Today nicknamed "capital of Green Venice", Coulon was a very important port through which goods coming from Aunis, Poitou and Saintonge passed.
Located on the edge of the northern shore of the Gulf of Pictons, between plain and marsh, this former Gallo-Roman colonial estate operated by coloni (free agricultural workers, but linked to the land) became in the 11th century a large rural town anchored along the the Sèvre Niortaise, whose port activity was intense from the Middle Ages to the 19th century between Niort and the ocean. This village served to connect the plain and the marsh, with the Sèvre as the main axis of circulation. The Louis Tardy quay dates from the 19th century.
Step 6
The Coulon footbridge which crosses the river was installed at the end of the 1879th century following the drowning of a young boy who was crossing the Sèvre to return home to La Repentie de Magné. A first wooden footbridge was built in 1962. The footbridge under which you pass today dates from XNUMX.
Step 7
The current structures were built between 1862 and 1872. The green ones, located on the navigable network, are the property of the DDE monitoring the river level and the blue ones belong to the wet marsh unions governing the adjacent networks (rills and conches). Two water body heights are defined for each reach (part of a river between two locks and ensuring the maintenance of a sufficient water line for navigation), i.e. an upper water level threshold for the rainy seasons and lower for the hot season. They thus make it possible to reconcile public (inland shipping) and private (agriculture) interests. Located on the old towpath, the Sotterie dam-lock, classified as a fishing reserve, was restored in 2006.
Manually operated lock.