Eighteen kilometres southwest of Rochefort, BROUAGE is another seventeenth-century military base, this time created by Richelieu after the siege of La Rochelle. It is surrounded by salt marshes, now reclaimed and transformed into meadows grazed by white Charollais cattle and intersected by dozens of reed-filled drainage ditches, where herons watch and yellow flag blooms. It's a strangely beautiful landscape with huge skies specked with wheeling buzzards and kestrels and, being flat as a pancake, it's good cycling and walking country. To reach the town from Rochefort, you cross the Charente on the D733 near the Pont Transbordeur. From there, turn right to Soubise and follow the D3 to Moëze and Brouage.The way into Brouage is through the Porte Royale in the north wall of the totally intact fortifications dating from the mid-seventeenth century. Locked within its 400-metre square, the town now seems abandoned and somnolent; even the sea has retreated, and all that's left of the harbour are the partly freshwater pools, or claires, where Oysters are fattened in the last stage of their rearing. Within the walls, the streets are laid out on a grid pattern, lined with low two-storey houses. On the second cross-street to the right is a memorial to Samuel de Champlain, the local boy who founded the French colony of Québec in 1608. In the same century, Brouage witnessed the last painful pangs of a royal romance: here, Cardinal Mazarin, successor to Richelieu, locked up his daughter, Marie Mancini, to keep her from her youthful sweetheart, Louis XIV. The politics of the time made the Infanta of Spain a more suitable consort for the King of France than his daughter – in his own judgement. Louis gave in, while Marie pined and sighed on the walls of Brouage. Returning from his marriage in St-Jean-de-Luz, Louis dodged his escort and stole away to see her. Finding her gone, he slept in her room and paced the walls in her footsteps. Half a dozen kilometres south, on a narrow, drier spit of land, past the graceful eighteenth-century Château de la Gataudière with its unique interior and original furnishings (March–Nov Mon–Sat 10am–noon & 2–6.30pm, Sun 2–6.30pm; €5.34) – built by the man who introduced rubber to France – you come to the village of MARENNES. This is the centre of oyster production for an area that supplies over sixty percent of France's requirements. If you want to visit the oyster beds and see how the business works, you can do so here; just ask at the tourist office on place Chasseloup-Laubat (tel 05.46.85.04.36, fax 05.46.85.14.20) or out of season at the mairie, 6 rue Foch (tel 05.46.85.25.55) – visits cost on average €7.62 for an adult, €3.05 for a child. For accommodation in Marennes, try the inexpensive Hôtel du Commerce at 9 rue de la République (tel 05.46.85.00.09; €30–40), with a restaurant where you can eat generously and well from €9.91. A good alternative for eating is La Verte Ostréa at the end of the pier at La Cayenne, where Oysters and shellfish form the basis of every menu (from €9.91).
Pages in section ‘Brouage and Marennes’: Oysters.
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