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What to do in La Tremblade and Ronce-
Where to go around La Tremblade
Where to go around Royan and Rochefort
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What to do
Within about 18 miles
South of La Tremblade on the banks of the Gironde estuary is Royan, the largest town and administrative headquarters of the area. With its sandy beaches and mild climate, Royan was a fashionable seaside resort in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The town centre was destroyed at the end of the second World War and is now a showcase of 1950s architecture and is again a very popular seaside resort. Click here for the town’s own website or here for that of the area.
To the north of the town is the Gardens of the World, a large site including Japanese, Mediterranean and Tuscan gardens and with an olive tree purported to be 1,800 years old.
From Royan a regular ferry crosses the estuary to Pointe de Grave on the tip of the
Medoc peninsula, allowing a day out in the famous wine area including the famous
communes of Margaux, St Julien, Pauillac and St-
On a rocky outcrop south of Royan perches the pretty medieval town of Talmont with its eleventh century church and narrow, traffic free streets.
Just off the road between Saintes and Rochefort is the “fairytale” castle of La Roche Courbon with its magnificent ornamental gardens.
North east of La Tremblade, the town of Rochefort is a fine example of a seventeenth century new town, built as a Catholic counter to the Protestant La Rochelle to its north. The town was an important naval base for many years and when its Corderie Royale was built to make ropes for the navy it was the longest building in Europe.
In one of the old dry docks next to the Corderie Royale is a project to build a replica of the frigate Hermione which in 1780 took General La Fayette to Boston to join the American revolutionaries.
Close to the centre of the town, an ordinary town house facade hides the fantastic home of nineteenth century sailor and writer Pierre Loti. The rooms include Renaissance, Gothic, Turkish and Arabian rooms and a mosque.
Just north of Rochefort is the fashionable seaside resort of Fouras whose sandy beach is dominated by a seventeenth century fort and from where you can visit the island of Aix where Napoleon spent his last days before surrendering to the English in 1815.
The town also has a nostalgic museum of old shops, a huge greenhouse devoted to Begonias and the 1900 Transporter Bridge which takes passengers across the river on a suspended platform.
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