OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Salt of the Earth

By Barb Sligl

Discovering Noirmoutier, the sometime island off the Atlantic coast of France in the Vendée that appears and disappears with the changing of the tides.

Avast swath of sand, clay-coloured from the seawater still clinging to it, is stippled with figures poking in tidal pools. Barefoot with pants rolled up and buckets brimming with shellfish, clusters of clam diggers and families wander in the sodden landscape on either side of the Passage du Gois, which stretches four kilometres from Île de Noirmoutier to mainland France. As the high tide rolls in, the sliver of land will disappear again beneath the Bay of Bourgneuf.

PASSAGE DU GOIS

© PASCAL BELTRAMI

France has long beckoned with its diverse regions, from Provence to the vineyards of Alsace. I’ve biked in the rocky Dordogne Valley, toured the beaches of Normandy, strolled the buzzy streets of Paris, sampled cider and crêpes in Brittany, and sipped the eponymous libations in Champagne and Cognac. Yet I had not heard of Vendée until I read about its “sometime” island, Noirmoutier, off the west coast of France and thought, I must go.

Hand-harvested salt was first cultivated here by Benedictine monks in the 5th century. They turned the wetlands into salt marshes.

Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel A Secret Kept describes the Gois as a “cobbled submersible road” – the only way to and from the island (until a bridge was built in 1971). She writes about waiting for the water to slowly recede and cobblestones to reappear, slick with seaweed – “an amphibian road dotted with high rescue poles with little platforms for unfortunate drivers and pedestrians stranded by the upcoming flood.” Struck by this imagery, I set off by bike to see what De Rosnay describes as “muddy ridges of sand” and “waves impatiently licking.”

BOIS DE LA CHAISE, THE NATIONAL FOREST THAT TIME FORGOT

© ALEXANDRE LAMOUREUX

Cycling across the Passage du Gois, I pass tassels of seaweed draped over everything. Once on the flat, windswept, beach-fringed île (a slip of land 20 kilometres long and 7 kilometres at its widest point), I coast by a tapestry of ponds, a mirrored mosaic glinting in the sun. Little white mounds of salt sit on the banks alongside a lousse (a rake-like tool to skim the salt). On a Google map of Noirmoutier, a cross-hatch pattern of green covers much of the island, like organic hieroglyphics. These are the salt marshes, salterns and rectangular pools that collect salt, known here as the Atlantic’s “white gold.”

Hand-harvested salt was first cultivated here by Benedictine monks in the 5th century. They turned the wetlands into salt marshes. It’s believed Vikings attacked the monastery in 799 to get at this precious treasure. Today, there are about 100 salt farmers, cultivating 3,000 œillets to produce three million kilograms of salt a year.

BOATS AT THE JACOBSEN JETTY

© ALEXANDRE LAMOUREUX

I stop at a stall to buy a bag of sel gris, pale-grey crumbs. There’s also finer fleur de sel and herb-flecked salt. It infuses everything on the island, from bonnottes (the world’s most rare and expensive potato grown only here) to salicornia (“salty horn” in Latin), also known as haricot de mer. I taste this “sea asparagus” at a bistro next to the 12th-century Château de Noirmoutier in the island’s largest town, Noirmoutier-en-l’Île. It’s brought to the table in a miniature glass jar, pickled, briny and crunchy. The bright-green succulent grows in the sand and marshes and is foraged by ramasseurs and salt makers.

LE GRAND FOUR RESTAURANT

© BARB SLIGL

Of course, there’s also plenty of seafood, including Noirmoutier’s Fromentine oysters and those clams dug up at low tide in the bay. In De Rosnay’s book, she describes a classic local lunch – grilled sardines (with a glass of white wine) and a plate of bonnottes sautéed with bacon, butter and coarse salt. After sampling the salicornia and other salty gifts of the surrounding sea, I continue to pedal around the island to soak up its summer-holiday vibe.

THE ISLAND’S CHEFS DO WONDERS WITH THE FISH CAUGHT DAILY

© TRENDZ PHOTOGRAPHY

In the Bois de la Chaise, a shady stretch of gnarly pine trees and ancient oaks, I marvel at idiosyncratic villas, from English manors to Basque chalets. At Plage des Dames, I dismount from my bike and walk the promenade to take photo after photo of the long wooden pier, lighthouse and row of wee beach huts on the crescent beach. There’s a residual layer of bygone glamour from when this was the place for getaways among ritzy vacationers in the 19th-century. I spy on a posh, multigenerational family sipping aperitifs on a terrace overlooking the water. The matriarch is impossibly elegant with oversize sunglasses and crisp-white slacks. So French, I think.

WALKING IN THE FOREST ON NOIRMOUTIER

© ALAMOUREUX

When I head back across the Gois to the mainland, I ponder how Noirmoutrins measure this road by its rescue poles, not distance, as De Rosnay notes in her novel. I count nine poles along the seabed road, three with platforms to stand on, should one become stranded as the tide rolls in. I clamber up one and picture those first monks scraping their white gold. I linger long enough to see the water lapping closer and closer. It’s time to cycle away, but I feel a hint of sadness knowing that the passage will soon be swallowed by the tide and this “sometime” island will be out of reach again.

Tips From Our Experts

HOW TO GET THERE

Noirmoutier can be added to many itineraries as a day or weekend trip from Paris (5-hour drive), Bordeaux (4.5-hour drive) or Nantes (1.5-hour drive). In addition to the Passage de Gois, you can cross to the island by car or bicycle via the Noirmoutier bridge, which is open 24/7 and has no toll. If you’re visiting in the summer months, you can also take a scenic ferry that runs daily from Pornic, a 19th-century seaside resort community, to Normoutier’s L’Herbaudière harbour in about an hour.