We were in a small village, Mornac-sur-Seudre overwhelmed by tourists now but atmospheric, set in the middle of a marsh. The old villagers had made their living from collecting salt and hunting for oysters. The font in the church was in the shape of a large oyster shell. Was this in tribute to the trade of the village or acknowledgement of the Route St-Jacques thirty kilometres to the east? The churches here are very simple – no adornment — and many villages have Protestant ‘temples’, no doubt an echo of the days when Cardinal Richelieu laid siege to the Huguenots in La Rochelle.