In the morning we went for a boat tour of the nearby “La Grande Brière”, a fresh-water marsh. It was beautiful, and our guide tried to pass along some interesting facts but (as happens frequently) his English wasn’t great so we mostly settled for looking at the sights. The locals used to harvest reeds to thatch their roofs, and dig up peat to burn for warmth. These days it’s a protected park though, so resource-gathering is limited.
In the afternoon we checked out Ranrouët Castle, which was an important defensive stronghold in the area back in the 1200’s. The surrounding marsh already made it a bit difficult to stage an attack, but the castle has two concentric moats to make things even more difficult. Not to mention a separate right-angle-shaped barbican gatehouse that makes it hard to use a battering ram. Unfortunately when the French revolution came and the castle was abandoned, the locals decided to pick it apart so they could use the stones to build their houses. So a lot of the original structure isn’t left standing anymore, but enough of the walls are left that it’s still very impressive. The highlight of our visit was that we caught a glimpse of the barn owl that lives in one of the towers! I wish I was quick enough with my camera, but he flew away before I could get the lens cap off. He looked like this: