Tuesday walk: along the Sèvre niortaise

We've got a lot of photos in this post; they're all of the same theme, i.e., la Sèvre niortaise. Maman called this une rivière, which basically means a river. She said this shouldn't be confused with the marshland and its many man-made canals. That said, la Sèvre sported several locks along its length, suggesting that early boaters had decided to treat it as if it were a canal of sorts.

The river does actually flow into and through Niort, but it takes a winding path, thus lengthening my walk by a lot.

Like the Korean bike paths I've come to love, this path changes character as you walk along it. I was relieved whenever painful gravel gave way to hard-packed earth or to asphalt, but whatever the path's surface, the scenery was always gorgeous. My one regret was the absolute lack of any hills.