Saintes, France as base for Romanesque churches
 

I'm planning a trip next summer that will use Saintes as a base for exploring Romanesque churches in the Saintonge/Charente Maritime. I don't drive but am hoping to get around by bike and by train. Is anyone here familiar with Saintes, or have an interest in / knowledge about Romanesque churches in that area?

I don't drive but am hoping to get around by bike and by train.>

Are you bringing your own bike? Or renting locally. Taking a bike on trains is a hassle - I think not possible on high-speed trains but on regional trains marked with a V in a circle for Velo accepted where you can put it in bike car yourself. Maybe you have experienced all that - if so or anyone else please correct if not accurate - my friend is planning a train/bike trip in France and would like to know current policies.

If not knowing much about trains check www.voyages-sncf.com for schedules, fares and discounts; www.budgeteuropetravel.com; www.ricksteves.com and www.seat61.com for lots on French trains.

My impression is that public transportation to places like Aulnay, Surgères, Aubeterre, and Chadenac is limited.

Here are my pictures of those churches, with an interruption for La Rochelle and the Île de Ré: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca...845839973/show

When looked at individually, the locations are geo-tagged, which might help with finding them on a map.

We visited Saints when we were staying in the region for 2 weeks a few years ago. We were underwhelmed by the city & the sites. Just some Roman Ruins - and that's pretty much it. Michelin gave it 2 stars - and 3 of the two stars must have been because of the Roman Ruins - which we thought were not great either. We were staying in the Ile de Re and it was a long & wasted drive to Saints. Can't comment about using it as a base for visiting the churches, however. I would be bored staying in Saints. Cognac was very interesting, however.

Stu Dudley

Saintes is interesting for about 2 hours. As a base for romanesque churches, I don't know, but we have scores of them here in the Dordogne. You'd need to have a car to do most anything in this whole region, however. Planning a bike trip anywhere in Aquitaine is kind of a losing proposition unless the focus is on biking itself.

<i>"Just some Roman Ruins - and that's pretty much it"
"Saintes is interesting for about 2 hours. " </i>

It is truly wonderful to behold the confidence of the deeply ignorant.

The Saintonge is one of the world's great centres of the very finest, best preserved and best conserved Romanesque churches.

The church at Saintes alone woulds take anyone with an interest in what they're looking for at least 2 hours to visit properly

Elsewhere in France, of course, in our heathen times even the most wonderful village churches are locked much of the time. The wealth of the Bordeaux area and its longstanding orientation towards England mean practically every church in the Saintonge is kept open all day as if it were indeed in England.

Sadly, the odd-sounding French Catholic distaste for dogs in sanctuaries make the churches messy to visit with your pets: there's no shelter outside and in summer the sun can be unmerciful. I think it was actually in Saintes itself that we encountered one of those officious parishioners determined to enforce a rule their Church has never invented - though today's France is so heathen you're unlikely to encounter such a person more than once in a holiday

By bike, it looks a doddle.

Being France, there's an official list of churches on the Saintonge circuit and a brochure about it at all the Syndicats d'Initiative in the region (and of course in Bordeaux). There are, of course, HUGE placards all over the area (including in Saintes itself) describing the route. The Poitou-Charentes-Vendee Green Mich is reasonably useful, though these days it's always better to do a lot more work on the web

Saintes has an adequate train link to Bordeaux (hourly: 90 mins), so it ought to be straightforward to base yourself at Saintes and cycle to most of the others (they're on ave 3-5 miles from each other) or to cycle on the odd day via a couple more to an intermediate station and come back by train. Except on those TGV horrors, French trains always seem to me to treat cyclists well, but I don't ride a bike and railway companies these days seem always to be changing their rules.

Otherwise, I imagine local taxi companies must be used to your problem: there's a local cottage industry catering for pilgrims on the Compostella walks, so you're not that unusual.

All of which said, though: Bordeaux's big but surprisingly elegant, and the Romanesque routes in the area really start at Soulac, where English pilgrims traditionally disembarked: it was the traditional start point for both the route to Compostella and for the Via Francigena to Rome and on to Jerusalem. As a rough generalisation: the closer a French church is to an English pilgrimage route, the better preserved and maintained it still is today.

All the Compostella websites describe the "minor" (to a Frenchperson) pilgrimage routes: one place to start is https://www.csj.org.uk/planning-your...-routes-today/
You might see whether you'd see more if you based yourself nearer the coast.

Good luck. The area's wonderful.

<i>Elsewhere in France, of course, in our heathen times even the most wonderful village churches are locked much of the time. </i>

BS, in my experience.

"BS, in my experience."

How many French village churches have you tried getting into lately?

Christ: even the main church in many medium-sized French towns is closed except for Mass. And in an extraordinary number of towns - even with populations of 10,000 or over - Mass is said just once a week these days.

Contrast this with the routine practice in England, where practically all Anglican and Catholic churches - except in VERY insecure locations - are open and unsupervised between at least 9 am and 5 pm, 365 days a year.

It's now depressingly commonplace for me to spend a holiday in French villages roughly the same size as my own, and find to my horror that the church (in a monoculture like France, it's always "the" church) opens only for Mass - and that's now on just one Sunday a month.

This is a problem the French hierarchy fully understands, though believes itself unable to do much about. The difference between the French and English cultures on this is also well understood in both countries. Clearly the complexity of such problems is beyond the population of San Francisco, though.

It's understandable that people who display their ignorance about these things get annoyed (and gratuitously offensive) when it's pointed out.

It beggars belief, though, that they're so up themselves as to wilfully expose that ignorance.

The hamlet where I had a house (pop.100) kept its church open, at least the last time I was there (2014).

This chapel has been open every time I went to visit it:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca...7623717079199/

and this one:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/7738086532

and this one:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca...7623282383670/

and this one:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca...7623717915043/

and of course the ones I originally posted on this thread.

My impression is that any church that receives financial help from the government must be kept open for the public

Every church and chapel I'm familiar with around here is open to the public unless there is restoration work going on. Not every one has a weekly mass, but the churches in towns with populations of more than about 5,000 have at least one weekly mass, and often more. And pilgrimages for parishioners and children, and food and clothing drives and concerts and other social events and offerings.

Beggars the question as to who is being wilfully ignorant.

My first post on Fodor, and what a wealth of information and helpful people I've found here!
Thanks especially to flanneruk for his encouragment.
It will take me a while to work through all the suggestions and links.
I'll be flying into Bordeaux and taking the train to Saintes, where I have already booked my B&B accommodation. Nearer the time I'll contact the local bike hire company that delivers and collects from one's accommodation, and is also a great source of information on local routes.

For train informationI know that on bahn.de one can limit the search to local trains that take bikes: I have some experience of doing this from previous holidays in France.

I think my main problem will be assigning priority to the churches I want to get to during my scant solo days in Saintes, but I may be able to add in a few others in the course of a immediately following pre-booked hotel-to-hotel cycle tour that starts in Angouleme and takes in Jarnac, Bassac and Cognac.

I am quite often in the countryside villages near to Paris and up until about 5 years ago the churches were almost always open all the time. Within the last 5 years, pretty much without exception, all the village churches are now closed and locked. I believe the reason for this was theft of art/artifacts and I can hardly blame the government for taking the unfortunate but necessary precaution of closing the churches. If you really want to go into a church it is usually possible to go to the town hall and ask for the key (I've done this). The problem is that in most small villages the town hall is only open one or two days a week and just for a couple of hours each day.

In regards to taking bikes on trains I do that for a living and there is nothing difficult or problematic about it but you do need to know which trains allow that. I am familiar with doing this in the Paris region and on the local TER trains here it is always possible to bring bikes on these trains for free. There are also some Intercités trains I use where bikes are also allowed for free. However, I believe that there are different rules for bikes on TER trains in some regions of France but in general it is usually possible (and free) on the local TER trains. If you use the oui.sncf.com website to check train schedules you can click on the details for any voyage and if bikes are allowed you will see a pictogram of a bike. You will also see whether the train is TER, Intercités or TGV.

The following link shows a map of the train network in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Those routes marked with the letter "R" are bus routes:

https://cdn.ter.sncf.com/medias/PDF/...m78-165261.pdf

If you can read French the rules and conditions of bringing bikes on trains in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region can be found here:

https://www.ter.sncf.com/nouvelle-aq...-avec-son-velo

It does mention that bikes are permitted free of charge on all TER trains as long as they are placed in the spaces reserved for bikes.

FMT, I suspect that churches and chapels in the countryside around Paris have/had more artifacts that might be stolen than anything in our neighborhood. The chapels here are mostly bare. We spend a lot of time poking into old churches and chapels and have rarely found one that wasn't open. We've recently popped into old churches in Tayac, Le Buisson, Marquay, St-Alvère, St-Avit-de-Vialard, La Douze, St-Léon-sur-Vézère, Limeuil, and probably others - all open at various times on various days.

It could be that StCirq. I really don't know. But all the village churches started locking up, almost as if on cue, about 5 years ago. However, the church where I live in a densely populated suburb just outside Paris is always open (locked in the evening) and there is a precious 12th century wood sculpted statue of the Virgin Mary that was said to be miraculous and was a major source of yearly pilgrimage for several centuries between Paris and Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. It's kind of surprising considering that some of the village churches I know that are now locked had nothing in them to steal, yet our local church with a rare and valuable relic remains open.

StCirq

Have you visited the old Abbey in Paunat?
Beautiful village, great restaurant next door.

It was never locked.

Saintes really interests us, we have looked at visiting to buy property there. Settled on Cognac area or the Dordogne. Saintes seems well placed to the sea and vineyards.

Yes, we've visited it, several times, and it was never locked. Interesting legend about the pilgrim whose walking stick landed in the earth there where the abbey was constructed. Beautiful village.So is Urval.

I've seen that restaurant, Chez Julien I believe, but never eaten there. Will try it some time soon.

You might look at Royan as well.

ClareG: I just checked and I have a Hachette guide to the Poitou Charentes. It isn't current but as I am unlikely to visit there again, I'm happy to give it away.

If you would like it please send me an email at elvis mom 2002 at yahoo dot com.

I would actually enjoy sending it to you.

There a very much worse story in Scotland.

Two Abbots competed to establish Christianity in Scotland both had identified Lismore as a magical location (it is).

They agreed to race in row boats across the short body of water from the mainland, the first land would claim the island. Columba was much larger than his fellow competitor, St Moluag and was just ahead as the race neared its conclusion.

In desperation, Moluag stopped rowing grabbed an axe, cut off a digit a threw it into the Isje of Lismore.

An Abbey was built on the spot were his finger landed.

Yes, it was Chez Julien, we are there twice had really good food in a magical spot. Happy memories, seems like an age ago, considering today's (dire) weather in Scotland.

That's very generous, Tuscanfeedit: I've sent you an email.

StCirq and BritishCaicos: you must be mind-readers. Like all true travel addicts, I'm already looking at ideas for a year ahead of existing plans. For 2019 I've been thinking about returning to the Dordogne and a holiday based on visitng several places accessible from the Bergerac-Sarlat rail line. Now I must add Tremolat and the Abbey of Paunat to that list.