La Brenne: birds and railways

I well remember my brother Paul returning from France around 1967 and saying he'd discovered this wonderful place called La Brenne. He, especially, and I visited it many times in the next few years. Since then, La Brenne has been discovered by a few other people and is now protected as a Parc natural régional. It's a rather interesting type of wetland habitat - it is dotted with many lakes (known as étangs) which are basically large fish ponds. Yes, the area thrives on pisciculture!

Last week we saw many of the birds we expect: great crested grebe, little grebe, grey heron, night heron, wigeon, pochard, coot, kingfisher, whiskered tern, black tern, kestrel, buzzard... We also saw an osprey which is unusual there. But what has changed is the abundance of birds and, perhaps even more so, the abundance of butterflies. Basically, the area has suffered significant population declines, even though to all appearances the landscape hasn't changed at all! Perhaps someone is researching the issue.

Recently, I seem to have had a date with narrow gauge railroads of the two-foot variety. I've visited three in Maine in recent months (and will visit the route of another very soon) and of course the Billerica and Bedford railroad was the first such railroad in the U.S. Now, I've added another, albeit slightly wider, narrow-gauge railway.

Starting from Le Blanc, which delimits the area in the southwest, and extending all the way to Argent in the Sologne (a similar area somewhat to the north) was a metre-gauge railway called the Chemin de fer du Blanc-Argent. This remained intact only for about 50 years. The southern section of the line, from Le Blanc to Buzançais passed through La Brenne but is now almost impossible to detect. Nevertheless, I attempted to map the route here earlier this year.

Part of the line, from Argy to Luçay-le-Mâle is operated as the Train Touristique du Bas Berry. My mother, niece and I took its rather crowded "autorail" last week on a short section of the line starting from Écueillé. We all had fun. Another part of the line, from Luçay-le-Mâle to Salbris is still operated with regular service by TER.

While I certainly find these narrow gauge railways fascinating, and I recognize that they are much less expensive to build and maintain, I still lament the fact that Brunel and the Great Western Railway in England were unable to persuade people of the speed/safety benefits of the broad gauge (approximately 7').

Next blog: GR3