The
Charente Maritime Region
The Charente
Maritime region is renowned for its Pineau and
Cognac, and La Maison de Marguerite is just a short drive
from Cognac, Saint Jean d'Angély and the old walled
city of Angouleme. Poitier and Futuroscope
are just an hour up the motorway as are St. Emilion and
Bordeaux.
There are also many privately owned cognac distillers who will sell you
a bottle of extremely good Cognac very cheaply, and will probably show
you how it is made into the bargain. Our favourite is situated in the
little village of Neuvicq le chat and it promises to
be quite a memorable experience.
La Rochelle with its
bustling port and many wonderful restaurants and shops is a mere 40 minutes
drive away. You can also be on the coast at many different points within
an hour.
However, if you just want to relax and soak up the French sun, the countryside
around Cresse is breathtaking. There is a supermarket 10 minutes away
in Matha but there are more in Saint Jean d'Angély.
There is a pharmacy, doctor and hairdresser in the next village of Beavais
along with other local shops.
The drive takes 7 hours from Calais or should you prefer, you can fly from Stansted into La Rochelle or Poitiers and hire a car. Many of our friends and guests break the journey overnight at Tours or Saumur. For flight times and prices as well as car hire prices check out RyanAir.
Apart from RyanAir there are numerous other websites offering low cost flight information. These include cheapflights.co.uk that offer details of services to La Rochelle from:
London Area: Gatwick, Heathrow, Stansted
South & South East: Southampton
Midlands: Birmingham, East Midlands
Northwest: Manchester
Scotland: Edinburgh, Glasgow
and flybe.com have services from Birmingham and Southampton.
(According to Hitwise statistics* show that "Cheap flights", "flights" and "holidays" were the most popular generic travel searches and the price comparison website cheapflights.co.uk received more than a third of all searches on the term "cheap flights. *April 2005")
The South Atlantic is less than 3 hours from Paris Montparnasse by High Speed train (TGV) ter-sncf.com which stops in Charente Maritime at Surgères and La Rochelle.
Charente Maritime
is served by two
motorways: the A10 and A837.
The A10 has exits for Saint Jean d'Angély, Saintes, Pons, Mirambeau
and Jonzac. The Mirambeau-Jonzac exit is 45 minutes from Bordeaux-Mérignac
international airport. Saintes is 45 minutes from La Rochelle on the A837
motorway
The Department has several dual carriageways. To the south, via Angoulême (1 hour on the RN10) from Cognac (airport) to Saintes (20 minutes), from Saintes to Royan (30 minutes) and from La Rochelle to Rochefort (20 minutes). It is 1 hour 10 minutes by air from La Rochelle to Orly.
Useful Travel Links: