Discover Poitou-Charentes Blog

Some good news for the tourism industry in the Charente-Maritime, where the Atlantic coastline took a deadly battering from Storm Xynthia in February.

 Though the physical signs of the storm are still visible in some of the seaside and beach resorts of the Charente-Maritime, the 2010 holiday season so far looks as if it is a good one.

 Resorts such as Fouras, near Rochefort, and the popular Île d’Oléron are reporting brisk business, while La Rochelle has seen high numbers of visitors too this summer.

 As for the Île de Ré, the most popular part of the Charente-Maritime – which is itself the second most popular department in France for holidaymakers – it seems relatively unscathed by the high winds and waves that crashed over it.

 ‘Whatever happens, the Île de Re is always the Île de Re,’ says one tourism official (presumably even if some bits of it are washed out to sea…).

The picture is not so rosy in all parts of the coastline, however. The beach at Aytré near La Rochelle was badly damaged by the storm and a number of camping areas are still closed.

 Elsewhere in the Poitou-Charentes region, campsites are mostly reporting strong bookings this summer, thanks to the fine weather and the economic crisis (meaning fewer French people are travelling abroad).

However the trend is for better-equipped more upmarket campsites – they seem to be the ones attracting the best bookings. Reservations at cheaper campsites are generally not doing so well.

Plans by Angoulême Airport in the Charente to work with CityLineSwiss to provide a new service to London Gatwick have been put on hold. The airline says they the flights, which should have begun in late May or early June, have been postponed to the autumn.  However there are now serious doubts about the viability of commercial flights at the airport and thus the future of any UK service from the Charente. The problem is that the various local authorities who provide much of the funding for the airport are worried about who picks up the bill if the Gatwick service makes a loss. ‘We’re not a bank,’ says department council president Michel Boutant. The mayor of Angoulême Philippe Lavaud, who heads a coalition of socialist and greens, is also ideologically more in favour of trains than planes. ‘They pollute less,’ he says. Daniel Braud, president of the chamber of commerce (CCI) who run the airport, and himself a keen fan of the flights, is now publicly wondering whether they can hope to maintain a service in the future. For more information on the status of the flights – including those to Marseille and Pau – visit the CityLineSwis website.

Fancy a trip down the River Charente? For the past year Cognac has been missing a company offering boat hire on the Charente. But now a new firm is setting up a river boat hire service at Cognac’s port. Rive de France, which is based on the Canal du Midi at Colombiers, and which until recently ran the port at Saint-Savinien in the Charente-Maritime, is already up and running.  Its boats can be hired for a weekend trip up and down the River Charente or for an entire week. Two boats are already in place and four more will be arriving before the holiday season gets fully under way. The firm has moved in after another company Locaboat decided to stop hiring its boats out at Cognac.

The Charente and Angoulême have got their flights to London back. On Saturday 10 April CityLine Swiss – a subsidiary of Cityline Hungary – began accepting reservations for flights starting later this spring at the end of May between the Angoulême-Cognac International Airport and the UK. The flights are to London Gatwick and will be three times a week – on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Tickets are at €55, which includes a snack and soft drink on board the aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas 83, with a capacity of 150 passengers. Passengers will be allowed one item of hand luggage and hold luggage up to 20kg a person will be free. The airport has been working hard to find a company willing to take on flights to the UK after its well-publicised battles with Ryanair over money. Ryanair terminated its agreement with the airport after the latter refused to put up more cash for the Irish airline. As an added bonus for people in the region, CityLine Swiss will also be operating flights to Marseille and Lyon, at €99 a ticket.

The airline behind the planned flights from Angouleme - CityLine Hungary

After the disappearance of the Ryanair service, Angoulême Airport in Poitou-Charentes hopes to set up a new service to London Gatwick with Hungarian airline CityLine Hungary. Negotiations are well advanced to establish a three flights a week service to Gatwick on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The all-year service would be reduced to two flights a week from November to April.

Read the rest of this entry »

As the citizens of Charente-Maritime begin the grim task of clearing up after the devastation wreaked by Storm Xynthia, the full impact of the wind and tides has begun to emerge.

Across France at least 52 died in the storm, most of them in the coastal resorts of the Vendée but many too in the Charente-Maritime. The worst hit areas here were the islands ÃŽle d’Oléron, ÃŽle de Ré, Aytré, La Rochelle and Châtelaillon Plage, and the department has reported at least eleven deaths. The coast to the south towards Royan was also hit, but less badly affected than areas further to the north.

The departments of the Vienne and Deux-Sèvres were also badly hit and they, together with the Charente-Maritime, were included in the official state declaration of a natural disaster. This means, in theory at least, that insurance claims for damage caused by the storm in those areas should be able to be processed, and quickly. In Poitou-Charentes the least affected department was the Charente, which was not included in the natural disaster status. Attention is now turning to why so many houses along the coast were built in areas prone to flooding from the sea.

Meanwhile businesses along the coastal area, a popular tourist area for the French and foreign holidaymakers, are having to take urgent action to get ready in time for the holiday season. The government has already pledged cash for stricken businesses, including oyster farms.

The coast of Charente-Maritime was worst hit by Storm Xynthia

A powerful storm with gusts of up to 150kmh has hit the Poitou-Charentes, killing several people, cutting off the power for tens of thousands of homes and causing widespread flooding.

The part of the region worst hit by Storm Xynthia, which hit France in the early hours of Sunday 28 February, was the coast of Charente-Maritime, where high tides combined to cause flooding. An 88-year-old woman was found drowned in her own home at Boyardville in Saint-Georges d’Oléron on the ÃŽle d’Oléron, and there were reports that up to two other deaths could have been linked to the weather in the department. The flooding was also bad in the port resort of La Rochelle, where the emergency services were called in to rescue people from their homes. 

Many thousands of people across Poitou-Charentes – especially the Charente-Maritime, the Vienne and the Deux-Sèvres -  saw their electricity  cut off when fallings trees and branches brought down power lines.  A number of roads were blocked by trees and there was widespread disruption to transport. Across France Storm Xynthia caused at least 45 deaths and brought power cuts to a million homes as repair teams struggled to keep on top of the damage. Worst hit were the towns of La-Faute-sur-Mer and  
Aiguillon-sur-Mer in the Vendée just north of Poitou-Charentes, where a total of  29 people died as the strong winds and surging tide raised water levels by 1.5 metres.  Many of thsoe who died were drowned.

The storm, which was forecast well in advance by France Méteo, is  the severest to hit Poitou-Charentes since the infamous storm of 1999.

Up, up and away...for good

The flights between London Stansted and the airport near Angoulême in the Charente have come to an abrupt end. Ryanair have pulled out of the service with immediate effect, despite the fact that the five-year they signed with the airport authorities runs until 2012. How has this situation arisen on a new route that had already proved popular with passengers?

Essentially it’s been a row about money. Late in 2009 Ryanair demanded more money from the Angoulême airport authorities to continue the service, making it clear that if no more cash was put up, the flights would end. The authorities in the Charente, not unreasonably, said that they would abide by the terms of the existing contract and would not therefore hand over any more money for what are described as ‘marketing fees’. Read the rest of this entry »