Terra Aventura, a connected trip in the Marais poitevin

30 August 2019

As an original day out, the geocaching app Terra Aventura offers a circuit in the heart of the Marais poitevin in Saint-Georges-de-Rex, Deux-Sèvres. In this new 2.0 treasure hunt, you will discover the Marsh in a different way. Will you solve the puzzles spread over the course and locate the hidden treasure?

What is Terra Aventura?

One of the wash-houses of Saint-Georges-de-Rex

Available on your smartphone and tablet, Terra Aventura is a free geocaching app which offers treasure hunts through discovery courses. Thanks to the geolocation system of your phone, you follow a path where you must validate checkpoints to answer puzzles and locate the hidden reward, the “Poï’z”. You hike with your family with the green, wild environment of the Marais poitevin Regional Natural Park as game board.

Discovering Terra Aventura in the Marais poitevin

 As warmer weather approaches, so approaches the summer heat and the feeling of holidays in the Marais poitevin. What better way to enjoy the day than by going green for a few hours and enjoying the freshness of the Marsh? Let’s go to Saint-Georges-de-Rex, just twenty minutes away from Niort, to discover the app Terra Aventura through the course “Guardians of the marsh”. After a registration that only lasts a few minutes and checking the battery of the phone, here we are at the starting point of the 6-kilometre course through the marshes of Saint-Georges-de-Rex and Amuré in the Green Venice. It is at the laundry of “la Grande Fontaine” that the adventure begins with the first puzzle. The geolocation of the phone and the app requires a good network connection and seems to be quite precise. For those who wish not to be always on the phone, you can do the adventure with a GPS device after you download and print the course. You just need then to enter the GPS coordinates as you progress during the trip and reconnect on the app at the end of the course to validate your answers and discover the location of the hidden treasure.

Landscapes of Saint-Georges-de-Rex along the Terra Aventura route

A hike in the Marais poitevin

With no intent to spoil the quest, we can however reveal that the route quickly leads us to the heart of the marsh, through the unsealed roads and typical channels also known as “conches” of this green area so pleasant when it is hot outside. Zécolo, our virtual guide, gives us everytime some information on the places, the fauna and the flora we see.

If you read that it is possible to do this trip with a stroller, we tend to be more sceptical about this. Unless you have an off-road stroller, the route takes you to a few passages which can be complicated to cross. However, by foot or by bike, it is easy to do it and enjoy a few passages under the trees, the best to refresh. A picnic break is also possible on the route thanks to tables available for that. The puzzles are easy to solve, and the six kilometres of the course can be done in two hours, without any halt. Of course you can stop whenever and wherever you want.

The end of the course brings us back to Saint-Georges-de-Rex, where the reward is. After your answers have been validated, the app gives you the location of the reward.

To discover the Marais poitevin in a playful way, there is others new Terra Aventura courses, availables in Marans, Coulon, Magné or Niort.

Now, it’s your turn!

If you are a fan of connected walk, also test the Baludik adventure, there are several walks in the Marais Poitevin!