WETLAND Wonders Gillian

WETLAND Wonders Gillian Thornton explores a stylish seaside resort and its wetland neighbour in Pays de la Loire. Beach resorts can get pretty crowded on a summer Saturday, but head down to the waterfront at La Baule and there’s plenty of space for everyone. Tucked into a curve of the coastline just north of the Loire estuary, La Baule-Escoublac – to give the town its full name – boasts a glorious arc of golden sand stretching for nine seductive kilometres between the headlands of Le Pouliguen and Pornichet. Turn your back on the sea however and just a few miles inland lies a very different watery landscape. The Parc Naturel Régional de la Brière is France’s second largest wetland area after the Camargue, bordered by the river Loire and the shipyards of Saint-Nazaire to the south, the Vilaine river and Brittany to the north. Stay in La Baule and you can enjoy a wide range of aquatic activities in, on and beside the water. I arrive by car from the walled town and salt marshes of neighbouring Guérande – catch up on my trip in our last issue. Barely 6 km apart, they make a dramatic contrast. One a medieval city with lofty ramparts and towers; the other, a modern resort of low-rise buildings and seaside villas. And what villas! Today’s resort grew out of the humble village of Escoublac which holds the dubious distinction of having to move inland to escape the onslaught of sand blown in from the dunes. In 1779, this once coastal community shifted Le Croisic away from the shore, but gradually the dunes were stabilised with planting schemes and in the 1830s, tourists began to trickle in from Saint- Nazaire to nearby Pornichet and Le Croisic. Fast forward to the 1880s, the arrival of the railway and a growing fashion for sea bathing. Two Parisian entrepreneurs involved with the railway – Jules-Joseph Hennecart and Edouard Darlu – quickly saw the potential of Escoublac as a new holiday resort. So they bought up 40 hectares of dunes at La Bôle, enlisted the help of local businessmen, and laid 44 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 45