FOOD AND DRINK
Given the expanse of Poitou-Charentes, many will disagree as to its star specialities, but brandy will always be somewhere near the top of the list as it’s produced in Charente and Charente-Maritime – notably in the town
of Cognac! The abundance of livestock provides the ingredients for grillon Charentais (based on slow-cooked morsels of pork), beef dishes including the daube santongeaise casserole, wonderful local cheeses and recipes such as tourteau fromager, an unusual but tasty pastry with a blackened crust, made using fresh goats’ cheese. You can oſten find versions of these in the cheese aisle of national supermarkets. As for the coast, it’s rightly famous for oysters, mussels (moules de
bouchot), prawns and other shellfish, but also seaweed and the succulent new potatoes from the Île de Ré.
drive south, its historic and picturesque harbour streets or its easy access from Paris: four hours and 30 minutes, and around 16 trains a day. Unsurprisingly, La Rochelle
comes at a premium for househunters, as a 22m2 studio costs from €90,000 to €300,000 and a central, two- bedroom penthouse can fetch €1,248,000. If you’re set on this beautiful town, a €125,000 budget will secure a studio or one-bedroom apartment – maybe even with a pool in the newer developments. Other key towns include
Niort (population 59,193 and famous for insurance and banking), Angoulême (41,603; home to classic car races, an international comic-book festival and a train station only an hour and 40 minutes from Paris) and finally Saintes
(26,694 residents, a riverside town full of ancient sites), all having good investment options in the centre and on the pretty river banks. If big-draw tourism is your
goal, the Île de Ré is so popular that the 17,709 population swells to 180,000 in summer. But it’s not easy to grab a bargain here – 20m2
studios
start at €200,000, while a modest one-bedroom home of 34m2
will cost €350,000. Just
to the south, Île d’Oléron also undergoes a 10-fold population increase to around 200,000 in high season and while apartments are almost as costly as on Île de Ré, in Oléron you can find a house for under €150,000. That said, the rental yields on either island can be impressive, upwards of €1,000 a week for a studio not much bigger than most bedrooms.
In contrast, head to the
countryside and €150,000 can secure a 10-room farmhouse with 5,000m2
, a period
property in a market town, or a pretty bungalow, updated and with beautiful gardens. For would-be renovators, €62,000 buys a six-room farmhouse with 19,000m2
of Beautiful Île de Ré is popular and the house prices here reflect this 26 FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: March/April 2023
land and for €20,000 you can take your pick of townhouses, rural retreats and small farms. There’s such a plentiful supply that you need to stay level- headed about costs. Finally, a quick look at building plots: a budget of
TRANSPORT Poitou-Charentes is remarkably accessible from Paris, with high-speed trains to Poitiers taking two hours and to La Rochelle or Angoulême three hours. If you’re flying, La Rochelle
€50,000 in Poitou-Charentes buys a significant building plot (terrain constructible) of around 4,000m2
. If you
compare that to the current average-size plots for a new-build in England, that apparently gives you enough space to build 12 houses!
“In the countryside, for €20,000 you can take your pick of townhouses, rural retreats and small farms”
© SHUTTERSTOCK
© SHUTTERSTOCK
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