Randonnée Saint-Georges-de-Rex – Le port Goron d'Amuré
Route details
Description
Happy hiking and remember that you are not alone on the trails you are about to travel. We therefore invite you to respect nature: avoid picking flowers and plants, do not leave any trash behind, respect inhabited places, stay on the trails, keep dogs on a leash.
Your itinerary
Step 1
In the area called “les Mottes”, small adjoining ditches, the responsibility of the owners, demarcate plots of land which are irregularly divided and accessible only by boat.
Step 2
In the “Marais” sector, the rectilinear conches, lined with pollarded ash trees, alternate with grassy paths leading to the meadows. A biotope decree protects this natural environment, characteristic of the Deux-Sèvres wet marsh
Step 3
From the footbridge over the Grande Rigole du Port Goron, the landscape reveals itself a little. The sanitation of the pocket of the Saint Georges and Amuré marshes took place in the 19th century with the digging of the Rigoles de Rimonbœuf and Port Goron. In addition to drying, they allow navigation towards the Sèvre Niortaise.
Step 4
Isolated from the town of Amuré, this natural port has a gently sloping slipway made of limestone.
Built to encourage trade with St-Georges-de-Rex, La Garette, Le Vanneau, Coulon and Niort, it offers outlets for local production (firewood, hemp, market garden crops and fish).
During the 1995th century, its activity declined due to the development of roads in the marsh. In XNUMX, it was restored as part of the Major Works of the President of the Republic.
Step 5
Dating from the 2005th and 1889th centuries, the building, partly rebuilt in the XNUMXth century, was restored in XNUMX. It hosts a photo exhibition remembering life in the village in the past. Its old cemetery contains tombs from the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries in the shape of a sarcophagus and a XNUMXth century hosnière cross listed in XNUMX.
Step 6
The hike runs through the Amuré marsh (Rouchis à Brunet), dotted with interpretation markers on the pollarded ash, frogs, herons or dragonflies, etc., alternating between white, grassy and dirt paths to return to the Grande Rigole .
Step 7
The Rigole de Rimonboeuf is the main collecting canal for the waters of the St Georges and Amuré marshes. When you cross it, take a break to try to catch a glimpse of the dense wildlife of the Marais.
Step 8
The port of Saint-Georges-de-Rex is the only one not established on the edge of the hillside. The harbor and its access channel (Rimonboeuf channel), entirely dug in the limestone from 1850 to 1870 to approach the dock as close as possible to the village and the town with 150 hectares of marshland, are connected to the Chail canal and the Grande Rigole de La Garette, towards Coulon, Marans or Niort. It is made up of a gently sloping paved slipway, cut stone quays with two access points and a high masonry spillway helping to maintain water in the port. The natural light bulb port is restored as part of the Major Works of the Marais Poitevin.
Step 9
A small stream three kilometers long, the Richebert was built to supply a large public washhouse, a watering trough and neighboring gardens and, further downstream, to fill the moat of the feudal castle with water.
Step 10
The building was built in 1882 thanks to the sale of part of the municipal marsh and with the stones of the old priory church which was located at a place called Le Prieuré (conservation of the polychrome wooden tabernacle from the 1781th century (*) and the bell of 32). Its 24 meter high bell tower, struck by lightning on December 1945, 1948, was restored in 1999, then hit again by the storm of XNUMX.
Unusual: a hand-cranked winch whose chain was once stretched to the 2nd bay of the bell tower to dry the firefighters' leather hoses, without twisting them.
(*) Rehabilitated in 2017 thanks in part to the community heritage fund of the Niortais Urban Community.
Step 11
The Grande Fontaine wash house, located in the village, in the eponymous street, is fed by a spring with a hand fountain and located along the road. Its open-air basin is quadrangular and has a cutaway to adapt to the plot and the road.