Gite Tranquille

23/12/2023

Martin Pack and I would like to wish one and all a
VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS
AND A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR xx

26/04/2022

great day out

15/02/2022

If a vaccine pass is required, a mask is not, except in certain situations such as on public transport. See our full list here

08/02/2022

One of my favourite days out

⛵ 𝗣𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗕𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗮𝘆 ⛵ Coup de ❤️ du lundi.

📷 NS Prod - Filmmaker

25/01/2022

the beaches of the Vendee

27/10/2021

02/10/2021

100 years since the statue was first revealed by George Clemenceau himself.
History and Heritage
PRESIDENT GEORGES CLEMENCEAU INAUGURATES HIS MONUMENT ON OCTOBER 2, 1921
At the crossroads of the RN 137 and the RD 948 stands in SAINTE-HERMINE the monument Georges Clemenceau. A few helmeted soldiers, in campaign clothes, their feet weighed down by the mud.
The dominant one, a man - a civilian - wrapped in a traveling coat, wearing a little soft hat. His face tense, his gaze grave, he scans the horizon, while the rough faces of combatants rise up towards him.
That figure, with nervously clenched fists, those drooping mustaches, those protruding cheekbones, who wouldn't recognize him? It is Georges Clemenceau.
Although born in Mouilleron-en-Pareds in 1841, Clemenceau's first youth spent at the Château de l'Aubraie, four kilometers from SAINTE-HERMINE. It was Clemenceau himself who designated the place on which the monument would be erected.
This statue was executed by Sicard, who was a personal friend of the former President of the Council. It took two years for this statuary to square and cut the block of stone from Pouillenay-en-Bourgogne, from which these singularly expressive and lively figures emerged.
The artist was inspired by a famous sentence pronounced by Clemenceau in the Chamber: "I am making war" and also this other word that he liked to repeat: "It is not I who am interesting, it is the hairy ”.
Mr. SICARD did not want to separate them.
“I had the joy, on October 2, 1921, of inaugurating my own statue at SAINTE-HERMINE. It was very touching. It took place in an atmosphere of a village fair, ”Georges Clemenceau wrote in his memories.
This original ceremony took place on October 2, 1921.
Clemenceau's speech has remained in a way historic. In front of his statue, he exclaimed, to the applause of the crowd: "France, France, France above all."
He did not regard this monument as a witness to his own glory. He paid homage to it to the hairy people around him, to the guys from Vendée who, after having opened the bloody furrow of the trenches, simply returned, after having saved it, to sow the land which will nourish the Country.

In 1941, during a night of o**y, the German occupation troops mutilated Clemenceau's face and the head of a soldier. After repair, the monument was surrounded by planks until the Liberation.
Many politicians bowed to the monument, including Vincent Auriol, President of the Republic, President Monnerville, General de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac ...

Jean CHAUVIÈRE

02/10/2021

Today there will be a ceremony in Ste Hermine of the anniversary of George Clemenceau

Il a été inauguré le 2 oct 1921. Le monument Georges Clemenceau situé dans la commune de Sainte-Hermine en Vendée, est l'unique monument que Clemenceau a ina...