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Notes on the geography of the last few weeks.
We had not realised quite how flat this area of northern France is. In the north of Normandy around Cherbourg the land is about 300ft above sea level and obviously as we followed the coast down to Le Mont St Michel we never rose above 100 ft and often were walking along the shore line which was crossed by multiple small rivers/ streams each with their own mini estuary culminating in the walk across the sands of Le Mont St Michel with it’s three main water courses entering the sea there. The most southerly of these was Le Couesnon flowing north from the high (300ft) lands south of Fougeres.
Travelling southeast to Laval we met the Mayenne at Laval at a height of somewhat less than 200ft having “peaked” at about 600ft around Ernee as we crossed the watershed from those northern flowing steams to those draining southwards into the mighty Loire including the Mayenne joining it at Angers and the Sarthe flowing from Le Mans at the dizzy height of 150ft down to the Loire also at Angers at 49ft above sea level. This drop of only 100ft over 52miles as the crow flies and with the surrounding country not rising above 150ft with few exceptions, goes quite a long way to explaining our problems with land drainage during the last 10days and the size of these sluggishly flowing rivers. Most of which with the weirs and locks on then are navigable to boats a lot bigger than British Narrow boats.
We are currently at Le Lude on the Loir (110ft above sea level) a tributary of the Sarthe and the chateau here is poised a dizzying 30ft above the river on “high” ground.
I hope that the next few days will see no more of the sort of ground we have been covering and the soils seem sandier and better drained than further north. But we shall not get above 500ft for several weeks until south of Poitiers, and over 1000ft until south of Limoges, as we reach the watershed between those rivers draning northwards into the Loire and those southwards into the Dordogne which loops south then west to enter the sea with the Garonne in the Bordeaux estuary.
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