The Forest of Bercé: The 300-Year-Old Oaks of the Futaie des Clos and the Sequoias of La Coudre

Required Activities

• In the Futaie des Clos, planted in 1647, find the named oaks in order of height — the Roulleau de la Roussière at 51 m, the Potel at 50 m, the Boppe at 47 m, the Muriel at 43.5 m — then find the stump of the older chêne Boppe, struck by lightning on 18 December 1934 and felled on 22 July 1935 once its successor further along the path had been christened

• From the Fontaine de la Coudre, walk the teaching trail « À l'école de la forêt » through both groves of sequoias and stop at the foot of the chêne Emery, a single oak that comes close to 50 m, to compare its bare trunk with the sequoias either side of it

• At Carnuta in Jupilles, the house of man and the forest, work out how a sessile oak becomes a barrel stave, and find what the museum says about the eight Bercé oaks of about 230 years chosen in March 2021 for the new roof of Notre-Dame de Paris, out of roughly 2,000 trees taken across France

• Walk down into the vallon de l'Hermitière to its spring, the fourth of the forest's emblematic sites, where local families have come out for a Sunday picnic since the 19th century, and follow one of the straight forest rides to the star-shaped junction, or rond, at its end