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Most of the old province of Poitou is a huge expanse of rolling wheat land and sunflower and maize plantations where the combines crawl and giant sprinklers shoot great arcs of white water over the fields in summertime. Villages are strung out along the valley floors. Heartland of the domains of Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, whose marriage to King Henry II in 1152 brought the whole of southwest France under English control for 300 years, it is also the northern limit of the langue d'oc -speaking part of the country, whose Occitan dialect survives among old people even today. West of Poitiers the open landscape of the Poitou plain gradually gives way to bocages - small fields enclosed by hedges and trees. The local farmers' co-operatives say that grubbing up woodland and creating vast windswept acreages in the name of efficiency and productivity is going out of fashion. And not just for aesthetic reasons: wind erosion has left scarcely 15cm of top soil.
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