Visiting France's Hidden Beach Resort at the Sables d'Olonne (Vendee, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting France's Hidden Beach Resort at the Sables d'Olonne (Vendee, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My husband Laurent and I left the Charente-Maritime département the next day to visit the Vendée département.  We knew we had entered the Vendée when we passed the département’s symbol: two superimposed hearts with a crown and cross on top of them.  The Vendée was the last royalist region to rebel during the French Revolution (1787 – 1799).  The Vendéens paid dearly for their allegiance to King Louis XVI (1754 – 1793), Queen Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793), and the Church.

During the Guerres de Vendée (Wars of the Vendée) from 1793 to 1796, peasant and noble leaders emerged to lead the Catholic and Royal Army against the Republicans of the revolutionary government in Paris according to the Pays de la Loire Michelin Touring Guide.

The most horrifying part of the Vendéen Wars were the “Colonnes Infernales” whose mission was to exterminate the soldiers, women, and children of the Vendée as well as to destroy all the housing and fields our touring guide noted.  The Vendéens lost the wars, but managed to escape genocide.

Despite its bloody past, the Vendée is now one of the most visited areas of France.  Our destination that day was the beach and the town of Les Sables d’Olonne.  The Michelin touring guide noted that it was the Empress Eugénie (1826 – 1920) who popularized swimming in the ocean in the late nineteenth century.   The appearance of the train in the Sables d’Olonne in 1866 cemented its position as an oceanfront resort town.

I was looking forward to seeing the ocean and feeling the Atlantic breeze in this town where Laurent spent his summers with his grandmother.  She rented a tent for decades along the oceanfront where we all enjoyed sunbathing and building sand castles.

When we arrived, we walked along the Ramblai, which follows the entire curve of the beach.  The Ramblai has several openings to the beach.   We went down one of them and up to the lapping edge of the ocean.  Laurent said he received his first driver’s education course at the beach’s Go-Kart area when he was six years old.

We ate raw oysters for lunch and finished the day walking around the neighborhoods before going back to Charente-Maritime to pack our bags for our next coastal destination.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting a Camino de Santiago Church in Saintoge, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting a Camino de Santiago Church in Saintoge, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I read that Saint Pierre d’Aulnay-de-Saintonge Church outside La Rochelle was part of the Route de Santiago de Compostela, I immediately wanted to see it.  Ever since I read about Santiago de Compostela in Spain (Galicia) and the routes going there in Gourmet magazine as a child, I have been interested by this pilgrimage route of the Middle Ages.

Santiago de Compostela houses the tomb of Christ’s apostle Saint James the Great according to the UNESCO World Heritage Center (whc.unesco.org/en/list/868) and became famous after Godescalc, the Bishop of Le Puy in Auvergne, France became one of the first foreign pilgrims to the site in 951.

For more than a thousand years pilgrims from all levels of society have been walking the Route  de Santiago through France to get to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.  UNESCO’s World Heritage Center writes that the success of the pilgrimage “coincided with that of the Clunaic Order.”  The Cluny Order, headquartered in Burgundy (France), encouraged the worship of relics, which were often housed at stops along the Route of Santiago de Compostela.

There are four main pilgrimage routes in France starting from Paris, Vézaley, Le Puy, and Arles.  Subsidiary routes fed into the three main routes as follows according to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Paris – Routes from Boulogne, Tournai, and the Low Countries converged here.

Le Puy (Auvergne) – Routes from the Rhône Valley converged here.

Arles (Provence) – Routes from Italy converged here.

For Vézelay (Burgundy), I consulted the website of the Confraternity of Saint James (www.scj.org.uk/route-vezalay.htm) to find information on the route of Vézelay as one used by Scandinavians, Poles, and Germans.

The French Government Tourist Office (www.uk.franceguide.com) lists St. Pierre d’Aulnay-de-Saintonge as being on the main Paris route as well as subsidiary routes coming from Tours, the North of France, and along the coast.

When we arrived at the church, other cars from Germany and Switzerland parked next to us. The church was surrounded by lichen covered graves with no names on them.  The church was small; no doubt it is what the UNESCO World Heritage site referred to as a “staging post” for spiritual and physical comfort.  I mentioned to Laurent that pilgrimage routes must have been difficult to maintain during wars.  They were probably reopened as soon as possible by either the church and/or farmers.

As we set out westward towards the town of Surgères and its weekly market, I wished I could know where the pilgrimage path was outside Aulnay.  I looked out over a wheat field and saw two deer running freely through it.  I could tell their legs were not crashing into wheat and said, “That is the path to Santiago de Compostela.”

Wheat fields abound in the Charente-Maritime département.  There are also fields full of sunflowers and corn.  France is not a country where polenta is made, so I assumed the sunflowers and corn were both used to make oil.  Every field looked well cared for on land that has been reclaimed from marshland. I also noted that there was no garbage anywhere along the roads inland.

A storm that sounded like a train descended on the Charente-Maritime that day.  However, I slept soundly despite the sounds of a locomotive roaring past the hotel window, happy with a great day of history and tourism.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photograpy

Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting the Abbaye aux Dames in Saintes, France (Charente-Maritime) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Abbaye aux Dames in Saintes, France (Charente-Maritime) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When we arrived in Saintes at the Abbaye aux Dames (The Women’s Abbey), the sun had come out after a long rain.  The Abbey’s ticket counter was in a vast bookstore with chairs to allow you to peruse potential purchases.  This particular bookstore had architecture books, history books, biographies, and art history books.  I bought several books on architecture and women in the Middle Ages.

In the abbey’s visitor’s brochure, I read that the Abbaye aux Dames was established in 1047 by Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou.  The mission of the abbey was to educate young girls of the French nobility.

In the eighteenth century, the Abbaye aux Dames was reconstructed in stone by Jacques Guërinet due to damage from the Hundred Years War (1337 – 1453) between the French and English and the Wars of Religion (1562 – 1598) between French Protestant Huguenots and French Catholics.

During the French Revolution (1789 – 1799), the buildings of Abbaye aux Dames were taken over and used as a prison and later the complex was used as a military barracks according to the visitor’s guide.  The City of Saintes bought the abbey in 1924.  The abbey became a religious establishment again in 1939.

What has paid for restorations to the Abbey aux Dames was the establishment of a Festival of Ancient Music at the site.  In 1988, French president François Mitterand inaugurated the cultural center.

While we visited, rehearsal for a concert was taking place in the Abbey’s church.  Music escorted us through a tour of a modern art exhibit in several of the Abbey’s rooms.

Today the Abbey aux Dames also educates young people through musical instruction and its hosting of a regional youth orchestra.   I wish youth orchestras were a worldwide phenomenon along with youth choruses. 

I thought as I left that the Abbaye aux Dames was making maximum if not exponential use of its space to attract audience of all ages, who like both ancient music and modern art.  The work of the Abbaye aux Dames is another great example of cultural tourism and arts in the life of the French people.

The active market in town draws people from all around, too.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Royal Abbey at Angely (Charente-Maritime, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Royal Abbey at Angely (Charente-Maritime, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I set out towards the interior of Charente-Maritime to see the Abbaye Royale de Saint Jean d’Angély for several reasons.  According to our handy tourist brochure of the Saintonge area outside La Rochelle, we read that this abbey was founded by Pépin Duc d’Aquitaine and grandson of Charlemagne in 817 C.E. to house the “chef de Saint Jean Baptiste.”

“Chef” in this case is what is known to French language teachers and students as a “faux ami” or “false friend.”  I knew that “chef” here did not mean “cook” or “chief”.  I read a translation later in the guide that said the l’Abbaye Royale de Saint Jean d’Angély protected the head, or chef, of Saint John the Baptist.

I wondered if Saint John the Baptist’s head has been preserved throughout history in a reliquary hidden from Viking invasions (850, 860, and 876), English invasions (numerous or none depending on who you ask), the One Hundred Years War (1337 – 1453), and the French Wars of Religion (1562 – 1598).

The Abbey was reconstructed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the “classical style” as our Saintonge tourist brochure remarked.  The word “classical” during that time period conjures up images of the Colonnade du Louvre and the Façade of Versailles.  Both of these structures represent the apogee of Classicism in the Grand Style whereas the Abbaye of Saint Jean d’Angély represents a later classical style called “Sévère” in French.

In his book Reconnaître les Styles d’Architecture in Gisserot’s Patrimoine Culturel Series, Christopher Renault provides photos of the Colonnade of the Louvre built between 1667 – 1668 by Claude Perrault (1613 – 1688), Charles Le Brun (1619 – 1690), and Louis Le Vau (1612 – 1670) and the Façade of the Château de Versailles completed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646 –  1708) in 1689 to illustrate the Grand Classical Style of 1670 to 1685. 

The Colonnade of the Louvre has two stories, Corinthian columns and pilasters, carved medallions over the windows, and sculpture over the entryway and in the triangular pediment.  On the façade of Versailles, there are three stories, Corinthian columns, many windows, sculptures on the third story and roof, and an enormous garden with patterned parterres, geometrically designed trees, fountains, and a canal.  These Grand Style elements of Classicism were expensive to construct and maintain.

According to Renault, the end of the seventeenth century witnessed economic problems, which brought about the change in the Classical Style known as “le Style Sévère” in French, which takes place after 1685.  L’Abbaye Saint Jean d’Angély contrasts greatly with Versailles and the Louvre and not just because it is a religious institution. 

Saint Jean d’Angély is a two-story building with a high slanted roof to let Atlantic rains pour off it easily.  The windows on the first floor are rectangular with no decorations or columns of any sort. The second floor windows have only a simple semi-circle over them.  This architecture is austere.

There are two Rococo additions to this Severe Style building of the following architectural period: the chimneys and the interlacing ironwork in a floral pattern outside the balcony on the second floor, which is over the stairs to the main entryway.  This ironwork makes the abbey beautiful, because it is surrounded by the plain yet elegant lines of the Severe Classical Style.

It was raining as we admired the architecture outside, and I was looking forward to a guided tour away from the rain.  Once we entered the abbey, we climbed a huge spiral staircase that led us up and up, but no visitor’s office was in sight.  I found out that we were on the wrong side of the building from the tourism office.  Rain prevented us from exploring further.

We took out our Saintonge tourism guide and decided to head south to Saintes to see another abbey.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting Fort Boyard (Charente-Maritime, France) - Site of France's Aristocratic Games Show with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Fort Boyard - Site of France's Aristocratic Games Show and Great Seafood Platter Lunches - Charente-Maritime (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The next day we took a cruise from Fouras out to Fort Boyard, which has become a symbol of the Charente-Maritime département due to the French Fort Boyard thriller game show.  This show has run for twenty-three years and is broadcast in many countries.

What makes Fort Boyard so unique is that it stands in the middle of the ocean like an island.  It actually sits on a sand bank between two islands.  One island is the Ile d’Aix and the other is the Ile d’Oléron.

Salt, called “white gold,” from the Ile d’Oléron has made this area prey to invasion and occupations for centuries.  According to Thierry Sauzeau in Fort Boyard from the Petite Histoire Series, the Celts produced salt here at the end of the Iron Age.  He further writes that salt became especially sought after due to the long distance ship voyages, beginning in the fifteenth century; Long ship voyages required salt for preserving food.

Other world events that caused salt to be as valuable as gold were the growth of consumption of herring and cod, which both required salt for their preservation to enhance trade possibilities in lands far from the ocean Sauzeau writes.

Protecting revenue from this valuable commodity as well as protecting France from the English, who could use the islands of Aix and Oléron as staging posts for an invasion, made the Fort Boyard important for kings even if it took centuries to build.  Sauzeau writes that the first monarch to consider building a fortress in the middle of the ocean was Louis XIV (1600 – 1715).  Louix XIV’s military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633 – 1707) downplayed the idea due to its difficulty to build.

Louis XV (1710 – 1774) actually had plans drawn up for the fort, but did not have it built due to a lack of funds and worry that the English would destroy the construction site according to Sauzeau.  The first stone for Fort Boyard was laid in 1804 under Napoléon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821) according to our cruise commentator. 

However, after Napoleon’s naval forces were defeated at Trafalgar by the British under Lord Nelson (1758 – 1805), Napoleon preferred his land forces to naval ones; work on Fort Boyard was suspended in 1809 according to Sauzeau. 

Fort Boyard was completed under Napoleon III (1808 – 1873) during the Second Empire in France.  Fort Boyard was eventually used as what the French call a “passive” fort, a jail, a private residence, and now the scene of a thriller game show.

The Fort Boyard television series makes use of the fort’s individual cells to have one team per show try to win keys that will help them solve a puzzle at the show’s end. If the team solves the puzzle, contestants have the chance to amass gold coins before tigers that appear to be menacing enter the coin drop area.

Some of the show’s challenges include bungee jumping off the top of the fort to grab a key while others require dealing with spiders, rats, and snakes in close quarters in addition to mud wrestling, strength, and strategy games.

The day we went out to see the fort, the ocean was choppy as a storm was blowing towards the coast.  When the children saw Fort Boyard, they screamed and their parents and grandparents took photographs.

I think all the French rulers who wanted to build Fort Boyard would like to see it used a game site to test strength, courage, and intelligence in the television show.  

The seaside restaurants in Fouras can replenish your forces after a trip out to Fort Boyard.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Chateau de la Roche Courbon in Charente-Maritime, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Chateau de la Roche Courbon in Charente-Maritime, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I picked up a thick brochure on a tourist stand of all the principal sites to visit in the Saintonge area of Charente-Maritime outside La Rochelle.  I felt like a child in a candy store going through the brochure’s pages, especially when I calculated how close we were to the chateaus, convents, monasteries, and churches I wanted to visit.

The first place we ventured out to was the Château de la Roche Courbon with its famous garden and park.  The château was built in 1475 by Jehan de la Tour and modified by the Courbon family in the seventeenth century.  The famous garden and park were created by Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie (1626 – 1688) in the second part of the seventeenth century under the direction of Jean-Louis de Courbon.

The first thing we learned on a guided tour we took and in a temporary exhibit was that a French-style garden is characterized by three elements: symmetry, geometry, and perspective.  La Quintinie used all three elements of a French-style garden at Roche Courbon. 

Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie also worked with landscape designer André le Nôtre (1613 – 1700) at the château of Vaux-le-Vicomte.  Both men later worked at Versailles, where La Quintinie was put in charge of the royal kitchen gardens and orchards to provide fruit and vegetables for King Louis XIV (1638 – 1715).

Since 2000, the garden at the Château de la Roche Courbon has been built on wooden pilotis, or piles, due to its sinking into a marsh.  As long as the wood is submerged in water it does not rot.  The château itself sits on a rock.

Inside the château, the upper class servants’ room was most interesting.  The beds were short, not because everyone was short.  Rather, people slept sitting up as lying down resembled death.  Several people slept in a bed with a curtain pulled around the bed for warmth.

At the château’s exit, there were several games for royal and aristocratic young people set up for visitors to compete with each other.  The games featured strategy and dexterity to win.  One game called Billard à balles required rolling a ball up an incline on two rods that you moved together.

Another royal and aristocratic game called Bâtonnets shows up on France’s Fort Boyard television show.  In this game, you can draw one, two, or three sticks with the objective of leaving your adversary with one stick.  There are twenty sticks on the board; counting helps with the strategy for winning this game.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting La Rochelle - Site of Historic Religious Wars Between Catholics and French Protestants (Huguenots) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting La Rochelle - Site of Religious Wars between Catholics and French Protestants (Huguenots) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

As Laurent and I drove out of the Limousin and towards the Atlantic coast in the Charente-Maritime département, or state, where La Rochelle is located, I thought of how much I liked the Limousin.  The porcelain from Limoges was a big draw revealing my Anglo-Saxon heritage. 

On the way to La Rochelle, we passed the chateaus of Chalus (where Richard the Lionheart died during a siege), Rochouart, and Rochefoucauld.  We kept crossing the path Richard the Lionheart (1157 – 1199), which had me planning travel itineraries for upcoming years.

We stopped in Cognac and ate salads for lunch at an outdoor café.  The sun beat down on us as we toured the circular downtown area.  Tasting cognac and driving do not mix, so we continued on towards the coast without going into one of the tasting rooms.

Our drive westward took us into the Poitou-Charente region, which includes the Charente-Maritime département.  Regions existed before departments; many were royal provinces. Today there are 27 regions and 101 départements that make up France according to the CIA Factbook (www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fr.html).  La Rochelle is a city located in Charente-Maritime.  Charente-Maritime is a département located in the Poitou-Charente region.

La Rochelle is famous in French history for the Siege of La Rochelle, which pitted Catholic forces under Louis XIII (1601 – 1643) of France against the French Protestant Huguenot forces of La Rochelle with their English allies during 1627 – 1628.

Wars and battles often define culture as the defeat of the Huguenots of La Rochelle proved in the Peace of Alais (1629).  The Huguenots lost everything but their religious freedom guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes (1598) that Henri IV (1553 – 1610) had promulgated.  However, with the Huguenots weakened, it became easy to take away their rights.  Louis XIV (1638 – 1715) revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, making it illegal to be a Protestant in France for centuries.

Today La Rochelle is known more as a fun summer destination.  During our stay in Charente-Maritime, the Francofolies were taking place there.  This event is a series of concerts devoted to French-language contemporary music.  It was sold out, and the crowds were in the streets of La Rochelle despite an impending storm.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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