Taking its name from the colour of its waters, the Côte de Jade extends over more than 40 kilometres and forms the Atlantic coastline of the Pays de Retz, from Saint-Brévin-les-Pins to Pornic.
Taking its name from the colour of its waters, said to be a deep green in all seasons, the Côte de Jade extends over more than 40 kilometres and forms the Atlantic coastline of the Pays de Retz. It stretches from Saint-Brévin-les-Pins in the north to Les Moutiers-en-Retz in the far south, passing of course through the charming and unmissable town of Pornic.
From the estuary of the Loire to the Breton marshes, by way of the Bay of Bourgneuf, the Côte de Jade is a reserve of oxygen for lovers of the sea and of natural landscapes. Following the traditional customs officers' path that runs along most French coasts, the eye is inevitably drawn to strange wooden huts perched along the shore.
The pêcheries, for that is their name, allow the ancestral and very local technique of square-net fishing (pêche au carrelet) — a net suspended from the end of very long poles, an unmissable curiosity of the Côte de Jade.
For several millennia, life has settled on the coast of the Pays de Retz. From the first Neolithic times to the development of seaside leisure at the beginning of the last century, Pornic has known a dense and sometimes turbulent history. It had to endure the appetites for conquest of the Saracens, then the Romans, followed by the fearsome Viking warriors. An unavoidable theatre of clashes during the Vendée wars, Pornic — republican from the earliest days of the Revolution — had to withstand numerous assaults.
At the very end of the 19th century, in 1875, Pornic was connected by rail to Nantes, thus opening itself to the tourist development that continues to this day.