Saint-Nazaire was built on the edge of marshland. Just a short distance from the city – 8 or 9km away – is the Parc naturel régional de Brière. Sometimes also known La Grande Brière, this natural park covers 54,800 hectares (about 135,000 acres), of which 18,000 hectares (about 44,000 acres) is marshland. It’s a stunning, flat and sometimes desolate landscape, criss-crossed with many small canals and punctuated by little villages and thatched cottages. It’s a great place to hire a bike or, better still, a traditional flat boat and explore at your leisure. Traditionally it was an important source of peat and today the boggy area is a great habitat for many different types of birds including the short-eared owl, the northern pintail duck and the black-tailed godwit. It is also home to stoats, weasels and brown hares.
To hire bikes and find out more about the area ahead for the pretty little hamlet of Kerhinet where the tourist office or ‘Maison du Parc’ is based.