Moors of Gascogne

See also: Moors

The Landes of Gascogne (in Gascon tired Lanas of Gasconha ) constitute a natural area with the outlet of the Aquitanian Bassin on the Atlantic Ocean. It is characterized by a sandy ground deposited by the oceanic winds on a tilted sedimentary plate.

The Littoral is protected by dunes depriving of many small Fleuve S coastal of access to the Ocean and leading to the formation of a chain of lakes. The Bassin of Arcachon constitutes the only breach in the dune cord landais, length of 200km.

The landscape of wet Landes surveyed by the shepherds landais on stilt S.A. yielded the place in the middle of the XIXe century to the first main forest of France: the Forest of the Moors of Gascogne which extends on the “triangle from the moors” (Soulac, Nérac, Hossegor).

Presentation

Localization

The moors of Gascogne are bordered:

Principal cities

Seaside resorts

The Littoral of the Moors of Gascogne is constitutive of the Côte of Money, cash among the seaside resorts:

The forest of the Moors

See also: Forest of the Moors

The Forêt of the Moors extends on nearly a million to hectares, vast triangle going of Soulac to Hossegor and until Nérac. It recovers the major part of the departments of the the Gironde and the Landes as well as the west of the Lot-et-Garonne. The forest of pines such as it today is known covered only 200  000  ha before the systematic timbering of the dunes and the plain, does not modify this landscape. But nowadays, the maritime pine, largely majority gasoline account for 80% of the trees which compose the forest, the 20% remainder are composed of Chêne S, Orme S, Tilleul S, of Châtaignier S, Aulne S, bay-tree S, Arbousier S, Prunier S, Pommier S, Cerisier S, etc

Often qualified the monotonous one, the forest of the Moors however offers a great diversity of landscapes. To north, the proximity of the wine exploitations of of Bordeaux offer landscapes of pine and Vigne S frays, where the gravers and the traditional houses landaises are côtoient. In the south, the pines leave room little by little to the green hills of the Chalosse, and one guesses with far the the Pyrenees. The Côte of Money shelters forest with under wood very different from that of the interior of the moor. The cane-apple bushes, holm oaks and oaks lièges share the little of light which is not collected by the pines. In the middle of the main forest, the presence of some and rivers particularly Leyre, is favourable with the development of a forest made up of leafy trees very often dissimulating the river: the forest gallery.

Etymology

The common word Lande (in Gascon lana/lanne ) comes from Celtic the landa “country”.

Geology

The Calcareous Substratum and tertiary Molassique of the Aquitanian Basin was affected by movements Tectonique S which produced, with the Tertiaire, of a furrow open on the Atlantic platform to height of Biscarrosse.

At the end of the Miocène, cumulate Sédiment S of detrital origin Océan ic and coming from the the Pyrenees. Thereafter, several processes will lead to what is called “sands of the Moors”:

  • at the base, a siliceous argilo-sandy complex fossilizing Fluviatile origin and Lake ustre, from 20 to 100 m of thickness (Clay S with Kaolinite of Luxey - Pissos, Lignite S Pliocène S of Lamothe and Arjuzanx),
  • at the top of the Sand S fine quartz them, of origin wind, a few meters of thickness,
  • between the two, of the sandstone Silica ux with coloring Organic matter and of the sandstones with Cement Iron rugineux (Iron pan, Garluche) in Podzosol S washed.

History

The agro-pastoral system

See also: agro-pastoral System in the Moors of Gascogne

Until the middle of the 19th century, the inhabitants of the moors have to face the extreme poverty of the grounds. The moor was summarized with great naked extents, Marécage use, punts and unhealthy. Landais lived agro-pastoral system. Gathered in “Airial S” (small isolated hamlets), they cultivated the Seigle and the millet, bases of their thin food, and raised Mouton S whose role consisted in fertilizing the grounds. It is of this time that the image comes from the shepherd landais perched on his stilts. Indeed, this means of transport was adapted perfectly to supervise the herds, to move quickly and with dryness, while avoiding the punctures of Ajonc S. On the initiative of the “Captaux de Buch” (small local lords in Country of Buch), Nicolas Brémontier and later Chambrelent will undertake to fix mobile sands of the coast which threatened the close dwellings, and to cleanse the moor Indeed by digging ditches of drainage, locally called Craste S., the situation had become intolerable in the moors, where all the experimentation agricultural (Riz, Mûrier S, Arachide S, Tabac…) failed until there. The sandy and softened grounds did not make it possible the cultures to develop, and the epidemic S of Paludisme decimated the population. The pine was, and always remains, the only gasoline able to support of such conditions. This work will lead to the Loi of June 19th, 1857 which forces all the communes of the Moors of Gascogne to timber their territories of maritime pines. The area counted until there 200.000 hectares of forest natural, which will be wide in all Gascogne landaise. From there, the face of the area deeply will change and the pine will become the tree king of the Moors of Gascogne.

The gemmage

See also: Gemmage

The Gemmage is a thousand-year-old activity in the Moors of Gascogne. The first Gemmeur S exploited the Embryon S of what will become the largest forest of Europe, in order to carry out a kind of Goudron being used for the Calfatage of the boats. One found them near the littoral, in Lacanau, Tests It of Buch, Arcachon, Biscarrosse and Hossegor. With the disappearance of the Pastoralisme and the massive plantations of maritime pines, the process of gemmage will spread through all the forest and will become an industrial activity headlight of the area until in the years 1950. One obtained after Distillation collected resin, two compounds useful for industry: the Rosin (70%) and the Spirits of turpentine (20%). The outlets were primarily in chemical industry. The Gemmage disappeared at the end of the Eighties, and nowadays the forest of Gascogne has a paper vocation. Tourism is also one of the independent sources of incomes of the area, since the beginning of the 20th century.

The fixing of the dunes

See also: the fixing of the dunes in Aquitaine

Until the migratory dunes of the Aquitain littoral are fixed, the wind regularly involved great quantities of sand inside the grounds. Many villages had to be moved or rebuilt. One can quote among the precursors of this fixing the Captaux of the family of Ruat which led tests concluding to Tests It of Buch at the end of the XVIIIe century. This work will be generalized with the whole of the littoral thanks to men like Guillaume Desbiey, the baron Charlevoix de Villiers, Chambrelent or Brémontier. The French State will deal with the construction of offshore bar stabilized during the XIXe century: in 1876: 88000 ha have fixed summers. During the XXe century, ONF will ensure the management and the maintenance of these dunes.

Moors, department or forest?

Administrative cutting does not take account of the unicity of the territory of the Moors of Gascogne.

The department of the Moors covers only one part only of the Moors of Gascogne and includes/understands areas which are not landaises: the Chalosse, the Tursan and the Marsan. Conversely, the forest is inserted in the east until in Lot-et-Garonne, stops on the level of the Adour in the south and goes up until Soulac in the Médoc. The forest landaise, natural area linked by historical links, geological, biological, linguistic and cultural, is thus divided into three administrative entities: departments of the the Gironde, the Moors and the Lot-et-Garonne.

During the creation of the departments to the Revolution, one did not listen to the wishes of a certain Simon Aîné, geometrician, wanting to form a homogeneous department and respecting a cutting inherited several centuries of history, which would have been baptized the Eyre. The prefecture would have been Lugos, renamed " Lugôville" for the occasion. One did not pay more attention to the future bishop of Bayonne, Albini Gieure, when it required that one remove “the odious name” of the department of the Moors to replace it by that of the department of the Adour, just. It is however a strange marriage and a tear which the French revolution celebrated: the marriage of the hills of the Chalosse with the desert landais. “ Soon the line of cleavage between Landais and non-Landais did not pass more as it had always done between the plain and the slopes, black sand and the fertile Glèbe, it married simply the dotted line of the departmental charts. Whereas the peasants of the south of Adour transformed themselves into Landais, the inhabitants of Salles or Saint-Symphorien became individuals without name, of pale Girondins ” (Jacques Sargos, Histoire of the forest landaise )

Territories and Country of the Moors of Gascogne

Since good a long time already, the vast going triangle of Soulac (the Gironde) to Capbreton (department of the Moors) while passing by Nérac (Lot-et-Garonne), constituting the territory of the Moors of Gascogne , is parcelled out in several small " Pays" . These country all is linked by bonds history and geographical obviously, but also geological because they all belong to the sandy plain of the Moors, biological via the Forêt of the Moors, linguistics (one speaks the Gascon there) and cultural (they belong all to the Gascogne.

At the time of the creation of the department the March 4th 1790 pursuant to the law of the December 22nd 1789, the Moors of Gascogne were divided into 3 departments:

This new cutting gathers unit heterogeneous which did not have, a priori, no common bond, such as for example the south of the forest landaise and Chalosse in the department of the Moors, or the north of the forest landaise and the Between-two-Seas in the Gironde.

The consequences of this separation are in the beginning many confusions as for the presence of the forest of the Moors in the Gironde. The traditions landaises tend to disappear and the spirits tend to associate, wrongly, the Moors of Gascogne with the department of the Moors.

The development of the local inheritance in this Western part of the Gironde was focused, during many years, on the balneal activities on the wine activity of the fringe Is Médoc.

One however witnesses a progressive inversion of this tendency to lapse of memory, and more and more of tourist works and charts integrate this cultural heritage Landais into the Moors Of Gironde.

It does not remain less true about it than the country of the Moors of Gascogne are plain in the field of the cultural heritage.

the Countries landais:

Regional natural park of the Moors of Gascogne

See also: Regional natural park of the Moors of Gascogne

The regional natural park of the Moors of Gascogne was creates in 1976 and comprises 41 communes in the Gironde and in the department of the Moors. Its missions are the safeguarding of the inheritance, the balanced development of the economic activities, the sensitizing of public with their environment by waking up the curiosity of the host and the inhabitant.

It thus opened tourism of discovery. Each one of its equipment offers a way to return in the history of this country and to include/understand the charm of the Moors of Gascogne.

Located at horse between the departments of the Moors and the the Gironde, the park extends from the Bassin of Arcachon in Pays of Buch, follows the valleys of the Grande Leyre and the Petite Leyre, and finds its limits with those of the Large-Moor.

The house of the park is located at Belin-Béliet.

Culture

Spoken languages:

  • French (official language, spoken and understood by the unit by the population)

  • Gascon (vernacular language, still of use in the rural areas).

Among the local terms useful to know, let us quote some Gascon words following:

  • airiau/airial “space around the house where are the buildings necessary to the farm”

  • Alios “rock sandy of the basement landais, made up of sand (96%) bound by humic colloid and iron oxide cement”
  • practical Arristoun “consisting in nourishing 2 oxen of the house since the great kitchen (stay)”
  • brana/branne “Brande, heather with brush”
  • Craste “ditch of drainage”
  • supporting Estantat “member structural the hood of the houses”
  • esparrou (S) “bar, in particular for the reinforcement of the Cob”
  • Hapchot “small axe with bent nozzle used by the gemmeurs”
  • piñadà/pinhadar/pignadà which means “the tchanque pine forest”
  • (S) “stilt

Sources

  • Jacques Sargos, History of the forest Landaise , the Horizon chimerical, Bordeaux, 1997
  • Louis Grandpa, Moors of Gascogne and the Money coast, Privat, Toulouse, 1978
  • Christian Maizeret, Moors of Gascogne , Delachaux and niestlé, Paris, 2005 Massive
  • of the Moors of Gascogne - forest Inventory 1998 1999 2000, IFN

See too

External bonds

  • regional committee of tourism of Aquitaine
  • site of the natural park of the Moors of Gascogne
  • Ecomusée de Marquèze
  • Center of Contemporary Ceramics of Tursan with Samadet

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