Photo : Jebulon / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
Dunes de l'Ile de Ré
The Île de Ré, in Charente-Maritime, covers about 85 km², nearly 25 kilometres long and between 1.3 and 5.9 kilometres wide. It has ten communes and about 17,900 inhabitants, a figure that is multiplied tenfold in summer. A bridge of about three kilometres, opened in 1988, links it to the mainland at La Pallice.
The coast has almost 100 kilometres of shoreline, half of it beaches, mainly in the south-west. Large dunes protect certain areas, as at Les Portes-en-Ré and Saint-Clément-des-Baleines, but erosion is nibbling the dune ridge, notably at the Trousse-Chemise wood. The salt marshes of La Couarde, Loix and Ars-en-Ré long made the island's wealth, salt being nicknamed white gold there, alongside the vine, present since the fifteenth century. Saint-Martin-de-Ré, the former capital, keeps its ramparts, citadel and gates, designed by Vauban in the 1680s and inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage.
