It is not easy to describe this unusual place, located 30 minutes from Angers, and a little over an hour from Nantes, Rennes or Le Mans, and which combines the presentation of a 1900 village, rich collections, an animal park, and which offers three different hiking trails to discover everything!
La Petite Couère, ecomuseum....
An ecomuseum brings ancient times back to life, presents them, and seeks to transmit a material and human heritage. In this sense, La petite Couère is indeed an eco-museum where you can discover, for example, a life-size village from the 1900s!
We will see the trades of yesterday, in a situation: the cart, the blacksmith, the goldsmith ring maker, the clogmaker, and an industrial clog making with its machine tools, the oldest of which dates back to 1880!
We will stroll through shops of the same age, a grocery store, a barbershop, a toy store....
We will visit a bourgeois house, and a peasant house...
We will not forget to visit the public services, the town hall, the school...
And then, of course, we will admire about thirty collections presenting, grouped by theme, a large number of 19th century objects, perfectly restored and preserved.
La petite Couère, eco-park....
La petite Couère is also an ecopark, which offers a walk through an animal park including traditional rural animals, donkeys, horses and baudets, goats and sheep, etc.
You will also see many species of water birds, and you will encounter animals less common in our regions, such as Vietnamese pigs, emus, rheas, sika deer, llamas, etc.
Take a walk!
You can also walk from ecomuseum to ecomuseum in an ecomuseum park, following one of the three hiking trails that are prepared for you, which range from 1 to 3 kilometres.
And finally you can rest and eat, either with the snacks that are available, or with your own picnic using the tables near the village, or in the middle of nature. And it is also planned for groups, which will find marquees of different sizes.
It is certainly not an exaggeration to describe this place as unusual, insofar as it succeeds in harmoniously combining a heritage and animal approach, without forgetting an intelligent visitor organisation, and the various services in the visitor may need.
La Petite Couère
49520 Châtelais
Tél. : 02 41 61 06 31
*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
(free version) ***
Click on the image
Click on the image