Mornac. Places to visit in France

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Mornac (Mornac-sur-Seudre) is a fishing village about 10 -20 mins’ drive from our properties.  Like so many of these places, when we first came here it was a dark, dirty and smelly backwater.  In the past ten years or so it has been renovated and is now classified as one of the prettiest villages of France.

  les halles – 13th century market place

Oyster farming and salt from the surrounding marshlands are its two main forms of income.  It is in no way a shopping centre but there is a good selection of nice little shops, ranging from clothes boutiques to artist galleries, hand-made items of varying shapes and sizes and hand-painted crockery.  There is a boulangerie and a chemist, but otherwise the shops are essentially for tourists nowadays.

There are several very good restaurants and on a sunny day it is wonderful to be able to sit outside and eat while gentle port activity goes on around.

One small warning – this is rural France and shops will still close for two or three hours in the middle of the day, though perhaps not in August these days.  They have learnt !

You cannot drive in to the village centre.  However, parking is easy, just behind the 14th Century church, St Pierre, well worth a visit.  Churches in the area were almost always fortified because of invasion (and occupation) by the English.  Wander round the quaint streets. There is a tour available in the summer, and this will take you round the salt marshes and the oyster farms.

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