Route details
Description
Winding, the Sèvre serves other arms, canals, conches and ditches forming an exceptional network of waterways.
Your itinerary
Step 1: Church of Notre-Dame de Champdeniers
This church was built in the years 1070-1090. It dominates the Égray valley and above all retains a Romanesque nave remarkable for the quality of its architecture and sculpture. This monument today preserves one of the most beautiful sculpted ensembles illustrating the Romanesque Age in Poitou at the end of the XNUMXth century.
Step 2: Coudray-Salbart Castle
An impressive fortified castle attributed to the legendary fairy Mélusine, at the heart of the struggles between the kings of France and England, it controlled the crossing of the Sèvre Niortaise, the southern border of the lords of Parthenay-Larchevêque.
It is classified as a 13th century castle. the best preserved in France and England. An architectural model for the time, it has unique features: 1 rooms in an exceptional state of conservation; pointed barrel vaults, ribbed vaults or dome pierced with an oculus; vast archer niches; sheath (corridor in the thickness of the walls) unique in Europe... Educational replica of a trebuchet (siege engine), self-guided tours (show up XNUMX hour before closing for the last one) or guided tours (school or not, all year round , by reservation), monthly activities for young and old.
Step 3: Mursay Manor House in Echiré
This manor house, today a garden of ruins classified as a Historic Monument, was in the 1576th century the stronghold of Agrippa d'Aubigné, grandfather of the Marquise de Maintenon, great poet of the Baroque period and squire of the future Henri IV who passed through there in XNUMX the happiest days of his life. Moreover, the Allée du Roy, an avenue of lime trees three hundred years old, bears this name in memory of his stay.
Located on the left bank of the Sèvre, on a terrace placed on stilts out of the floods, below the Gallic path known as Magné, close to a ford, the old castle serving as an outpost at Coudray-Salbart has been transformed from 1596 to 1613 as a pleasure castle by Agrippa d'Aubigné who basty it strongly and conveniently new.
Step 4: The Niort Dungeon
On the banks of the Sèvre Niortaise, stands one of the most beautiful sets of twin Romanesque dungeons in France and the first building in Niort to be classified as a Historic Monument. It formed the central recess of a vast castle in the shape of a quadrilateral 1 m long. It was the King of England, Henry II Plantagenet, who, wanting to put in a state of defense the domains that his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine brought him through her marriage, decided to have it rebuilt, at the end of the 700th century, an impregnable fortress.
Step 5: Port Boinot
Former chamois factory until 2006, then National Center for Street Arts from 2010 to 2015, Le Port Boinot, in June 2020, it is between the Main and Sèvre Niortaise bridges: – A large urban park connected to the Park Natural Regional of Marais Poitevin – A variation of 6 thematic gardens – The reconversion of industrial buildings: the employer's house into a restaurant, the factory into a tourist-cultural and co-working space, the large dryer into a counter for roaming and hiking (antenna of the Tourist Office), a place of memory of chamois, the port workshops in a space dedicated to sports leisure practices (rental of bicycles and light boats) and events (contemporary art bar-expo L'ilôt savage)…
Step 6: La Roussille
From the Poitevin word roussea meaning both red and stream, La Roussille is the place where rouches, that is to say rushes, grow. Its lock was installed in 1394 by Duke Jean de Berry, Count of Poitou, to retain the waters of the Sèvre Niortaise in the canal and the Niort basin. It is the most important of the eight locks from Niort to Marans (Charente-Maritime) and one of the first airlock locks in France. The date of 1808 is engraved in the stone of the old lock keeper's post to recall the passage to Niort of Napoleon I who regulated navigation on the river by decree. As an extension of the current restaurant, the old barn of the lock keeper's house housed the horse used on the towpath to pull the barges on the small coastal river. Automated lock (remote control required), or portage.
Step 7: The Magné drawbridge
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 tonnes. 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.
Step 8: The House of the Marais Poitevin
The wet marsh is not just a landscape. This sector of the Marais Poitevin, which is often called the Green Venice, reveals itself differently, thanks to a visit to the Maison du Marais Poitevin (formerly Maison des Marais Mouillés). We understand the evolution of the territory and the attachment of market gardeners to their marsh. In just over an hour's visit, you will be able to discover our traditions through a pleasant and accessible museography. You will find 3 rooms: the bartending room, the eel room and the reconstruction of a market garden habitat. The Maraiscope will allow you to see the evolution of the Marais.
Step 9: Holy Trinity Church of Coulon
The priory church was founded in 830 by the abbey of Charroux, then attached to the abbey of Nieul-sur-l'Autize and placed under the name of Saint-Sauveur. Often plundered by the Normans, it was rebuilt in the 1569th century and received the name Holy Trinity at the end of the 1671th century. In the XNUMXth century, the monument was partly rebuilt, then burned in XNUMX by the Huguenots. Its bell tower was rebuilt in XNUMX. The building was remodeled in the XNUMXth century and classified as a historic monument. To see: false exterior preaching tower and funeral liter from the XNUMXth century due to the lord of Coulon Jean-Gabriel Simon Berthelin de Montbrun.
Step 10: Damvix
Damvix is a village in the Marais Poitevin located in the Vendée department in the Pays de la Loire region. Damvix is an ideal starting point for beautiful walks, by bike, on horseback but especially by boat! It is also a town ideally located for major tourist sites such as Puy Du Fou, La Rochelle, Le Futuroscope, Niort etc.