Forêt de Bois Blanc (Charente)

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The Forêt de Bois Blanc is a domain forest in the Charente department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region . It is located around ten kilometers east of the prefectural city of Angoulême .

history

The Montbron forest road in the Forêt de Bois Blanc

The name Bois Blanc has only existed since the middle of the 15th century. The forest was previously called Romegos or Romegoux . The Gallic word Ro or Rou refers to a nearby watering hole.

Before the 12th century, the forest still part was the huge forest area called Gros Bosc (the monastery Grosbois reminded today thereto), which later by deforestation in the Forêt de la Braconne , the Forêt de Dirac and the Forêt d'Horte was divided .

In a protocol issued by Louis de Froidour de Sérizy in 1674 on the recovery of the Forêt de la Braconne and the Bois Blanc, the Bois Blanc and the Forêt de Romegoux are mentioned in the subtitle. The document recommends planting the Bois Blanc with the same trees as in the Forêt de la Braconne.

In the book of manors ( Liber feodorum ) of Guillaume de Blaye, Bishop of Angoulême between 1273 and 1307, the names Ramegos , Romegotz and Romegoz appear .

With the French Revolution , the domain forest became state property.

Roman roads

The Forêt de Bois Blanc is crossed by two ancient streets:

  • the Chemin des Anglais - a Roman road from Angoulême to Limoges, which runs through Touvre, Pranzac and Vilhonneur . It now functions as a forest road from Touvre in the west to Le Quéroy (municipality of Mornac) in the east. Before the 20th century it was the official connection from Angoulême to Montbron, before the current road over Mornac was built (D 699).
  • the Chemin ferré , also called La Chaussade - the former Roman road from Périgueux to Poitiers . Coming from Le Puy-de-Nanteuil , it follows the east side of the Bois Blanc via the D 113, further along the municipal boundary between Chazelles and Garat and then via a path towards La Bourlie and Bouëx .

The two roads cross at the edge of the forest at Gros Chêne near Le Quéroy . A Gallo-Roman ruin was also discovered here, but not much more than ceramic remains have been preserved.

Language border

The language border between the Saintongeais in the west (municipalities of Touvre, Mornac and Garat) and the Occitan in the east ( Le Quéroy and Bouëx) runs through the Forêt de Bois Blanc .

geography

The 703 hectare forest is located in the east of Angoulême south of the D 699 departmental road to Montbron . It forms part of the municipalities of Touvre , Mornac , Garat and Bouëx .

The 4 km long and about 2 km wide Forêt de Bois Blanc covers a limestone plateau that stands out between the Valley of the Bandiats in the east and the Sources de la Touvre immediately to the west. The plateau culminates at 164 meters above sea level in the center, but extends down to 70 meters in the west. In the central part it is crossed by an east-north-east-west-south-west trending dry valley, which is followed by the Angoulême- Limoges railway line . To the north, the forest is separated from the Forêt de la Braconne by another northeast-trending dry valley. The D 699 runs through this much wider valley from Angoulême to Montbron and in it is also the center of the municipality of Mornac.

geology

Street in the Bois Blanc, on the right the Jurassic limestone

Like the neighboring Forêt de la Braconne in the north, the domain forest covers a karst plateau of Jura limestone - the karst of La Rochefoucauld . The karst is criss-crossed by many tectonic fractures. At its base, the seepage waters of Bandiat and Tardoire flow west towards Sources de la Touvre - the second largest upwelling source in France after the Fontaine de Vaucluse .

The flat layer sequence encountered forms part of the northeastern Aquitaine Basin . On the western edge of the Bois Blanc, angles of incidence of 5 degrees to the west or south-west are registered along the Échelle . The layer package consists of more than 130 meters thick oxfordium and 30 to 40 meters thick lower kimmeridgium . The very hard limestones of the Oxfordian are formed in reef facies , whereas the lower Kimmeridgian is clayey or marly. The lower Kimmeridgium appears along the north, west and south rims of the Bois Blanc as well as in a small, northwest-trending sagging ditch south of Le Quéroy .

The Grottes du Quéroy on the eastern edge of the Bois Blanc are worth mentioning . The cave entrance is surrounded by carts here .

Other types of terrain due to karstification are:

  • small sinkholes such as Lac Coquet , Lac Perrot and Lac de la Latte . These are not lakes, but collapse structures measuring a maximum of 5 meters in diameter, the clay backfilling of which holds back the rainwater.
  • small, no more than 3 meters in size, so-called gouffres - also collapse structures of no further significance.

In contrast to the Forêt de la Braconne, the Bois Blanc has no fosses, with the exception of the Trou de Mazart near Trotte-Renard , which cost its discoverer his life in 1934.

ecology

The Forêt de Bois Blanc is combined under Natura 2000 with the Forêt de la Braconne to form a 4,588 hectare protected area.

Parts of the original vegetation on the deep clayey-calcareous soils are still present. This belongs to the type of Atlantic oak forest, which consists of 70 percent sessile oak ( Quercus petraea ), English oak ( Quercus robur ) and other oak species (such as downy oak Quercus pubescens and stone oak Quercus ilex ) and 30 percent from species such as hornbeam , Field maple , French maple , linden and fruit trees . This association was then more and more replaced by conifers ( black pine Pinus nigra and Scots pine Pinus sylvestris ). For 25 years, however, great efforts have been made to displace these conifers on soils of poor quality as far as possible. Beeches , Nordmann fir , Atlas cedar , and black pines are now being planted .

Long-distance hiking trails

Crossroads between the GR 4 and the GR 36 on the western edge of the Bois Blanc

Several long-distance hiking trails cross the domain forest near the agglomeration of Angoulême . Including:

Forest houses

In the Forêt de Bois Blanc there are two forest houses - the Lac Coquet forest house on the sinkhole of the same name and the Bois Blanc forest house on the former road to Montbron.

See also

literature

  • B. Bourgeuil, P. Moreau and J. Vouvé: Angoulême XVII-32 . In: Carte géologique de la France at 1/50 000 . BRGM.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L.-F. Alfred Maury: Les forêts de la Gaule et de l'ancienne France . Ladrange, Paris 1867, p. 501 .
  2. ↑ Jean Nanglard: Livre des fiefs de Guillaume de Blaye, évêque d'Angoulême ["Liber feodorum"] . t. 5. Société archéologique et historique de la Charente, 1905, p. 404 .
  3. ↑ Jules Martin-Buchey: Géographie historique et communale de la Charente . réimpr. Bruno Sépulchre, Paris, Châteauneuf 1984, pp. 422 .
  4. ^ Jean-Hippolyte Michon: Statistique monumentale de la Charente . Derache (réimprimé en 1980 par Bruno Sépulchre), Paris 1844, p. 334 .