The Geography of La Baule
La Baule is a French town located in the western part of the Loire-Atlantique department. As the crow flies, it is 11.8 km from Saint-Nazaire, the capital of the district to which La Baule belongs.
An considerable seaside resort of the Côte d'Amour, it is famous for its imposing beach located at the bottom of the bay of Pouliguen, its play areas as well as its luxury hotels by the sea.
The town is situated in the bay of Pouliguen and on the Guérande peninsula, a territory joined to the mainland by a narrow passage found in the town of Saint-Lyphard.
From the 1900s, La Baule extends east to Pornichet, located at the position of the current Boulevard de la Republique in Pornichet, where it is then adjacent to Saint-Nazaire.
During the time of the creation of the municipality of Pornichet, the latter obtains over 97 ha of the territory of Escoublac, a tiny piece of the beach to the bridge of Mazy. In the western zone, La Baule is demarcated by the huge estate of Pouliguen joining the salt marshes of Guérande to the Atlantic and which, while serving as a limit with the town of Pouliguen, hosts the port of the two cities.
Among other things, La Baule has an area of 2 209 ha. Its altitude is nuanced between 0 and 60 m, reachable in the forest of Escoublac. This French city is located on a coastal area with a sandy part made up of important dunes. These parts are also called cliffs until the nineteenth century and are hung on the furrow of Guérande.
These dunes seem to arise from the ancient time occupying the coastal marshes in a route from west to east. The dunes on the side of La Baule-Escoublac is further away from the shore and has an altitude of 54 m, the highest point of the municipality. It is, in a way, this dune that engulfed the old village of La Baule-Escoublac at the end of the 18th century and a large majority of the furrow from Guérande to the road to the Jo.
The recent city of Escoublac transplanted nearly 1 km inland in 1779. The dune area and the swamps were subsequently extensively pressed into pasture land.
The dune of Guézy is established behind that of Mazy up to a height of 25 m and meets with the furrow of Guérande towards the road to Nérac. Between these two dunes flows the stream of Mazy, which, by the sea, indicates the limit between La Baule and Pornichet.