Looking up, looking down

Walt and I are actually coordinating our blogs, on a very high level, this week. He's starting his Vendée posts with photos he took at the beginning of our trip and working forward, and I'm starting with photos I took at the end, working backward in time. Yesterday he posted photos of the gîte rural where we stayed, near the town of Fontenay-le-Comte (pop. 15,000).

What can I say about the town of Niort, which we visited last Friday. The 1986 Michelin green guide describes the town as "giving off an impression of prosperity and bourgeois tranquillity that is not without charm." There are three big churches in the town. The name Niort derives from an old Gaulish term, novioritu, meaning a ford, as in a place where people could ford the river. The place has existed as a settlement and then a town since before the Romans conquered Gaul. The town, including the built-up area surrounding it (l'agglomération is what it's called in French), has a population of about 150,000.

Niort certainly felt peaceful and quiet at 10 o'clock on Friday morning. Cars were arriving to park in the lot across the river from the market hall, but slowly, with no sign of a rush hour. People were just getting out and about, so the place had a calm air about it, not noisy but also not deserted. The morning's weather was gray and surprisingly chilly, after all the beautiful sunny afternoons we had enjoyed all week.

We just wandered. Walt had Tasha on a leash that attaches to special belt he wears, so that he has both hands free to take photos. The dog was calm, curious, and well behaved. The old houses of the historic district seemed dignified and well looked after. After seeing the donjon and the market, we found the street called la rue Saint-Jean which, according to the guidebook, is the main artery through the neighborhood where many of Niort's most interesting and impressive mansions and residences are located.

The town is built on two hills that face each other across the slow-flowing Sèvre Niortaise river. The hilliness surprised me, because just west of town sits the area called the Marais poitevin, a network of water courses, ponds, meadows, and villages on flat lands that form a sort of reclaimed swamp. It's also known as La Venise verte — a "green Venice" where bateliers (boatmen) pole their barques (skiffs), carrying tourists along canals through deep green woods. We had spent two afternoons there earlier in the week.