Richard Toll

Richard Toll means Richard's garden in Wolof, after the French botanist Jean Richard who ran an experimental plantation here in the 1820s trying to establish European and tropical crops on the river. The Château de Baron Roger, built in the same decade for the colonial governor, still stands beside the water: a two-storey arcaded folly, long derelict, with the river running past it. The town today runs on sugar, with a large plantation and refinery on the irrigated land around.

What you actually see

• The Chateau de Baron Roger - an 1820s arcaded folly on the riverbank, derelict but standing.
• The river frontage - the Senegal river with Mauritania on the far bank.
• The sugar estate - irrigated cane covering the plain around the town.
• The garden site - the ground where the 1820s experimental plantation was laid out.

When to go

November to March is the cool dry season; the river valley is severely hot from April. Mornings are best. The cane harvest runs in the dry months.

Honest expectations

The chateau is a ruin, unrestored and unsafe to enter, and there is no interpretation at it. The town is an industrial sugar centre with little else. The heat here is among the worst in the country outside the deep interior.

Nearby

Lake Guiers is south, and Saint-Louis is west along the river.