Guide to Pays de la Loire

Pays de la Loire

Region embracing the western part of the Loire valley comprising the départements of
Loire-Atlantique (44)
Maine-et-Loire (49)
Mayenne (53)
Sarthe (72) and
Vendée (85)

Total population: 3 million
Principal city: Nantes
Tourist board

The region is composed largely of the historical regions of Anjou (around Angers), Maine (around Le Mans), a portion of Brittany (around Nantes) and the Vendée.

Although not as famous to the English-speaking world as Brittany, Normandy or the Côte d'Azur, the Pays de la Loire nevertheless attracts thousands of foreign families each year, thanks to a profusion of family campsites along the sandy Atlantic coast. The coast is peppered with pleasant resorts, of which La Baule takes the bouquet as the classiest, with Les Sables d'Olonne in the Vendée coming a close second. The little village of St-Marc, however, has an even more special place in many people's hearts. Just west of St-Nazaire, it was the subject of Jacques Tati's film Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot.

Nantes is a large, bustling town, home to the most important gallery of paintings in France after the Louvre. Its impressive château des ducs de Bretagne is well worth a visit, as is the passage Pommeraye, a sumptuous and fantastical 19th-century shopping arcade. The département was detached from Brittany in 1941, but even today most of Nantais would like the Loire-Atlantique to be reattached to Brittany. Matters reached a head in 2001, when the reigning Miss Brittany was temporarily sacked for uttering her support for the cause.

The town of Saumur is one of the most popular tourist attractions, being the home of the Cadre noir military riding school and, as a consequence, the "capital of horsemanship". Saumur is also famous for its mushrooms; it is the world's largest producer the white champignons de Paris, and for its sparkling white wine, although rosé and some red is produced in the area.

The Western Loire region and the Vendée in particular suffered enormous bloodshed during the Revolution, as the pro-royalist backlash (the Chouans) put up a spirited resistance. The civil war lasted the best part of a decade and took the lives of a third of a million citizens. Certainly the grimmest of all episodes during the Terror was the method of execution carried out in Nantes. Called déportation verticale, it consisted quite bluntly of packing boats with prisoners (male and female) and scuttling them in the Loire.

Loire-Atlantique (44)

Population: 1 million
Principal city: Nantes
Tourist board

Nantes is the capital of both the region of Pays-de-la-Loire and of the département itself, and formerly of the duchy of Brittany. In French terms it is a rather large city, with all the attendant industries and suburban sprawl, but its historic hub is pleasant. The château of the dukes of Brittany and cathedral are well worth visiting, and the shopping area is valued and popular. The art gallery is the second largest collection in France after the Louvre. Nantes is famous in France for its biscuit-making industry and for its soccer team.

The characteristic landscape of Loire-Atlantique is flatness. From a tourism point of view, most important destinations are on the coast. Its small resorts like Pornic and le Croisic are genteel, but the jewel in the crown is La Baule, a self-consciously elegant magnet for the beau monde. Riding roughshod over semantics, it goes so far as to claim having the largest beach in Europe. Nearby St-Marc was the setting for the film Monsieur Hulot's Holiday.

To the north of the Loire estuary lies the Brière regional parc: an area of wild marshland with 'islands' of villages with a characteristic radial shape. The quaint walled town of Guérande is the focus of the local salt industry, and the coastline is riddled with salt pans.

Ancenis, in the east of the département, is a centre for white wine production and has a château dating from the 15th century. The wine produced in this département is marketed for the most part for drinking with shellfish: the most famous variety is Muscadet.

Maine-et-Loire (49)

Population: 1 million
Principal city: Angers
Tourist board

The old province of Anjou has rather a genteel image, and it is of particular resonance to Anglophone visitors: the history of the Plantagenets is as much English as it is French. Unlike most of the châteaux of the Loire, Angers castle evidently had a defensive rôle. The bastions are very impressive, especially when seen from below. Despite its military purpose, the castle became a dazzling court under René of Anjou. The castle has a rich artistic arsenal — including la tapisserie de l'Apocalypse, the world's largest tapestry (107 metres in length), dating from the 14th century. Near to the castle, the unforgettably monumental works of David d'Angers are displayed in the restored abbey church.

Angers, the capital, is a graceful and pleasant city, but Saumur and its beautiful castle are arguably the jewel in Anjou's crown. The glorious château, which dates from around 1367, was built at the end of the 15th century as a country seat for Louis I of Anjou, the brother of King Charles V. Under the Empire, the castle was turned into a penitentiary, and later served as a barracks and an arsenal. It was sold to the city of Saumur in the early 1900s, and so was returned to the more dignified vocation of museum and art gallery. The cavalry museum and the national riding school of the famous Cadre Noir are also must-sees in the town.

Just to the south-east of Saumur is the village and great royal abbey of Fontevraud (sometimes spelled Fontevrault). Although the abbey church of Notre-Dame contains the tombs of many Plantagenent princes and princesses, incredibly, this large and beautiful ensemble was used a prison from the beginning of the 19th century until 1963.

The Saumur area is also home to a méthode champenoise wine that sells millions of bottles annually. Like the production of sparkling wine in Champagne itself, the Saumur cellars are in fact caves quarried into the soft stone — some are several miles long.

South of Angers lies a wine-producing area of Maine-et-Loire that is all but ignored by wine writers, but which offers a variety of wines — in particular delicious sweet whites — is the Coteaux du Layon. Saumur appears to claim this region for itself too, since much the harvest is bottled commercially on its outskirts, but the museum in the village of St-Lambert-du-Lattay proudly reminds visitors of its distinct personality.

More lowly than the caves of sparkling Saumur — but just as interesting a visit — are those where mushrooms are grown — the Loire Valley produces way in excess of 100,000 tonnes of mushrooms of many varieties each year.

Not all caverns are cold and damp, however: there are many beautiful residences carved into the hillsides along the Loire. With such imagination and care spent by the Loire's modern-day cave-dwellers, it's reassuring to know that the term habitation trogloditique is certainly not as pejorative in French as it might seem when translated into English!

Mayenne (53)

Population: 278,000
Principal city: Laval
Tourist board

Officially recognised as part of the national heritage, yet still little known, the masterpieces of Mayenne are ornate retables or altarpieces dating from the 17th century. They adorn not only important churches and the cathedral of Laval, but also simple village churches.

Boating holidays are increasingly popular in France, but there are still little-known waterways, such as the River Mayenne, that offer relaxing holidays. Interesting features along the way include a bateau-lavoir, Château-Gontier and Laval.

The tourist office of Villaines-la-Juhel, in the north-east of the département, has organised a 40-kilometre circuit of the six hemp ovens where the plant fibres used to be dried. Hemp, which is today seeing a resurgence in popularity, was widely cultivated up to 1900 for making rope and fabrics. Other heritage themes that are explored in the area are flax-making, agricultural implements, cider-making, weaving, smithcraft and slate-work.

The chaming and picturesque town of Ste-Suzanne lies halfway between Le Mans and Laval. It is an 11th-century stronghold build on a triangular spur of rock that rises 70 metres above the course of the River Erve, and is a holiday centre for the lush Coëvron hills in the east of the département. It prides itself on being "the only town William the Conqueror couldn't take".

Another military memory of Mayenne is the heritage of Jean Chouan: Jean Cottereau, known as Jean Chouan, was a leader of Royalist insurgents after the Revolution. He sparked off a rebellion in his home town of St-Ouën-les-Toits, and all across the borders of Brittany and Maine, but was killed early in the hostilities. Nevertheless, his rallying call of an owl's hoot (a chouan in country parlance) was adopted by the movement, supporters of which became known as the Chouans (the rebellion itself was named the Chouannerie). Jean Chouan was buried in the woods at Misedon, but the burial place was never disclosed by his friends and followers.

At Cossé-le-Vivien, near Laval, there is a very unusual museum containing the symbolic sculptures of Robert Tatin. Amongst the representations in 'The Strange World of Robert Tatin' are famous people and statues of the verbs 'to be' and 'to have'.

Sarthe (72)

Population: 514,000
Principal city: Le Mans
Tourist board

The city of Le Mans is known the world over for the 24-hour motor race (launched in 1923, and one of the three most famous racing events in the world, along with the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix). But another fantastic event takes place there every summer: les Cénomanies, which celebrate the town's heritage and traditions. Every year a different period of history is chosen and local inhabitants dress accordingly.

The cathedral in Le Mans has a wealth of medieval stained glass (the Ascension window dates from the beginning of the 12th century) and the old town represents one of the finest examples of Gallo-Roman walls in France, along with narrow, winding streets and staircases, 15th-century and Renaissance dwellings and mansions.

There are many lesser-known châteaux in the area. Many of these offer overnight accommodation and are excellent stopping places for visiting the local medieval villages and towns. Of particular note is Solesmes Abbey, 3 kilometres from Sablé: a Benedictine abbey famous for Gregorian plainsong, which may be heard daily. The right bank of the Sarthe offers fine viewpoints of the abbey.

To the south of the département lies the River Loir, not to be confused with the Loire: it is a tributary thereof that rises south-east of Chartres, in Proust country (he called it 'la Vivonne'). La Flèche, on a bend in the Loir (flexia, in Latin, whence the name). The ashes of the hearts of Henry IV and Marie de Médici lie in the transept of the église St-Louis. There is also a zoo here. Further upstream lies Le Lude, noted for its château, which runs son et lumière performances from mid-June to the beginning of September.

Malicorne is famous for its potteries; there is a museum and tours of the workshops are possible. Also worth a visit is the Poncé arts and crafts centre at the Paillard Mill on the River Loir, where visitors can see pottery, woodwork, glass-blowing, weaving and wrought-iron workshops.

The culinary speciality of Le Mans is rillettes, or potted meat, and wine is made in the countryside around Lhomme (where there is a vineyard museum).

Vendée (85)

Population: 509,000
Principal city: La Roche-sur-Yon
Tourist board

The name 'Vendée' is taken from that of a river that runs through the south-east of the département. After crossing the forest of Mervent, it flows through the town of Fontenay-le-Comte — which used to be the capital of Bas-Poitou (the county's name was changed to Vendée after the Revolution of 1789) until Napoleon decided his soldiers could keep the Vendeans in order more easily from La Roche-sur-Yon.

A microclimate, said to be similar to that of the Côte d'Azur, ensures that 2,500 hours of sunshine beam down on the Vendée's 140km of sandy beaches. June is traditionally the driest month, with peak tourist activity throughout July and August (especially 14 July to 15 August).

Principal seaside resorts are St-Jean-de-Monts, St-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, Les Sables-d'Olonne and La Tranche-sur-Mer. Inland, among the marshes, plains and wooded hills, visitors will find plenty to amuse them, including the breath-taking night-time son-et-lumière spectacle, known as the Cinéscénie, at Le Puy du Fou near Les Épesses, in the east of the département; and the fantastic day-time attraction on another part of the same site — a 'historical theme park' called the Grand Parc.

Other attractions include the tranquil waterways of the Marais poitevin (also called la Venise verte, or 'Green Venice'), a mysterious marshland in the south-east of the county; and the causeway that links the island of Noirmoutier in north-west to the mainland at low tide.

There are plenty of activities for all: water parks; castles; no fewer than five 18-hole golf courses; countless churches and abbeys; museums of every sort; prehistoric standing stones; thousands of waymarked footpaths; a signposted cycleway running along the coast (several sections already open, others under construction); mud flats and marshes that attract unusual birds, from avocets to storks; fishing in sea, rivers and lakes; and wide, unpolluted skies for stargazers.

This information is based upon information from Angela Bird's enormous collection of information about the Vendée at www.the-vendee.co.uk.