Sansais-la Garette - Niort Marais Poitevin Tourism

The commune includes two villages inhabited since prehistoric times : Sansais perched on a bocage hillside et La Garette clinging to the side of a mound (mound 31 m high), the heart of Poitevin marsh. Henry III of Navarre, the future good king Henri IV, staying in Mursay in 1576. , hunting and fishing in La Garette. Ten years later, back in the Poitevin marsh, he writes that…

Among these deserts are a thousand gardens where you can only go by boat... Of fish, it's a monstrosity in quantity, size and price...

Henry III of Navarre

Classified almost 90%, LaGarette, from the French guéret meaning fallow, is a village street Finished between hillside and marsh, between the Jaguin port and the port of the Vieille Auberge called Grand Port. Until the middle of the 1995th century, the latter was an important transit port for goods between Bas-Poitou (north) and Saintonge (south). In XNUMX, as part of theOperation Large Site, rue des Gravées, the main artery located between hillside and water, has been entirely restored with nesting of a herbarium in its soil. La Garette is an ideal starting point to discover the wet marsh on foot, in a boat, by bike ou on horseback.

What to see in Sansais-la Garette?

01. The street village of La Garette

The majority of the houses are from the 2nd Empire, a time when the wet marsh is drained, wooded, cultivated and pastured. The farm, called a cabin, is structured between the street and the water. Rural architecture is linked to the local geology (limestone stones from the hillside, poplar framework, so-called boot stem tiles, etc.). Under the same roof, the building is divided into two approximately equal parts (the dwelling house, then the stable, the hayloft and the so-called balet shed).

Other curiosities to see:

In Sansais:

Saint-Vincent Church from the XNUMXth century
The school town hall from the XNUMXth century
The windmills at a place called La Grande Versenne et at the Champ du Moulin
Two wash houses at the municipal pond (a large one with a tin roof with inverted slopes so that rainwater flows into a smaller one in the open air, then into a ditch extending into the meadow – restoration project for one of them)

At La Garette:

The economic and tourist area of the Marais Poitevin Interregional Park set up in the old sawmill (platform for the Association of Breeders by boat of the Green Venice and picnic and relaxation areas)
The House of the Horse
The Sansais-La Garette tourist complex
The impasse of the ovens (three private bread ovens, two of which are visible from the street)
The Chail dam-lock with boat passage
The educational journey (30 panels relating the market garden flora and fauna on an 800 m circuit with the possibility of connecting with your mobile phone using the terminals on the displays).