The best running trails around Soubise

Passage through the marshes, perfect for bird watching.

The Martrou viaduct is a road viaduct built between 1989 and 1991.

very cute

If you're wondering what this huge bridge-like structure is, it's a transporter bridge that spans the harbor to move vehicles and people from one bank to the other in a gondola (or transporter ) suspended from a carriage passing under the apron. Initially powered by steam, it now uses electricity. It was recently renovated and can still be used to cross the estuary.

The crossing costs €2 and takes a few minutes. Be careful, tickets are on sale, on the Echill side, at the ferry house, which is not open before 9:30 a.m.! However, you can buy the ticket from the driver when boarding, but only by credit card ;-) With the Soubise ferry, it's another nice way to cross the Charente.

Small town best known among cyclists for its river shuttle to Rochefort. The town remained for a long time an important crossing point for crossing the Charente between and the ocean, one of the only crossing points of the Charente with the Saint-Savinien ferry between Taillebourg and the ocean, until construction in 1842 of the Tonnay-Charente Suspension Bridge. The ferry was located at the current marina. The first mention of this ferry in the archives dates from 1477 but it existed well before. While the Rochefort lifting span bridge was put into service, the crossing of the Charente on the ferry stopped on February 5, 1967. The two stone slipways on either side of the river, where a road from Rochefort ended on the right bank, are still visible today at the village level and are used for launching boats. A ferry or ferry boat, the Rohan, has been back in service since June 2013 for the summer period. It has a transport capacity of 12 people including the pilot and 11 passengers on foot or by bike (2-3 Euro). At an altitude of 13 meters, on a spur overlooking the Charente which naturally lends itself to defense, there was a castle with a village enclosed by a surrounding wall like on the other bank at Rochefort. The castle is attested from 1092 with a first siege, and its destruction by a first fire. It is one of the first rocky banks encountered coming from the sea, on the left (south) bank of the Charente. On a seal dated 1383 there is this inscription in Latin: “subissia prima urbs insularum est sub borea” which can be translated as: “Soubise is the first town in the lee of the islands”. This is why in 1665, Jean-Baptiste Colbert proposed to the Duke of Rohan to sell his lordship or exchange it with the king to build a war port to arm and repair ships to protect them from attacks. English, but he refused and the project was finally carried out in Rochefort which is further from the estuary with a smaller draft. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soubise_(Charente-Maritime)

A transporter bridge is a bridge spanning a port, a canal or a river, to transport vehicles and people from one bank to the other in a nacelle (or ferry) suspended from a cart rolling under the deck. Traction, by cable controlled from the shore, was first provided by a steam engine and then, very quickly, by an electric motor. Originally, this transporter bridge was created to replace the ferries that made the crossings. These were unreliable and very dependent on the flow of the Charente, itself a function of rain, wind and especially tides. It was the engineer Arnodin who made the proposal, in 1888, of his prototype bridge to ensure more safety without hindering traffic. It was in 1900 that the bridge was inaugurated in the presence of the Minister of the Navy at the time, Mr. Lanessan, and the Minister of Public Works, Mr. Baudin. Unfortunately, the population increase and the increasing traffic, the traffic jams are more and more present and it is sometimes necessary to wait more than one hour to have a place on the nacelle. The decision was therefore taken, in 1967, to create a 2nd bridge not far away in order to unclog this axis. A very nice video is visible on youtube https://youtu.be/fOxl8Y3X_Ms Under renovation from 2016 to 2020, the transporter bridge has returned to service in good conditions and is once again providing crossings of the Charente. Some demonstrations are carried out such as those of tightrope walkers in November 2021 francebleu.fr/infos/insolite/non-vous-ne-revez-pas-il-y-a-bien-un-homme-en-equilibre-sous-le-pont -tranbordeur-de-rochefort-1636709367 The Rochefort bridge is closed to traffic from November to February inclusive. The cost of the trip is 2€ per person Know that today there are 8 transporter bridges still in operation in the world, including one in France, that of Rochefort: witnesses of the Belle Époque. Mostly fell into disuse by the middle of the 20th century, replaced by more traditional bridges, they were still impressive nonetheless. The very few modern transporter bridges (since 1930) were only created for tourist attraction or for occasional industrial needs. A new generation transporter bridge project is however being studied in Nantes: the return to soft traffic and the renewal of the maritime connections of the estuary towns give a glimpse of a new life for this type of structure.

In the 19th century, the only way to cross the Charente was by ferry. But this one was disturbed by the tides. It would have been necessary to build a bridge, but it would have blocked the maritime traffic, then very important on the Charente. It was therefore decided to build this transporter bridge, which was inaugurated in 1900. The pylons and bridge deck are fixed. A mobile nacelle is suspended from the deck and circulates between the two banks of the Charente thanks to a trolley. The transporter bridge operated from 1900 to 1967, then was replaced by a lift bridge, itself destroyed in 1991. The transporter bridge has resumed service and now allows pedestrians and cyclists to cross for €2 or €3 each way -feedback.