We arrived in Paris to spend a couple of days before heading off to central France to meet our New Zealand sailing friends from the Mediterranean who have had a canal boat in Europe for seven years. The time in Paris was wonderful, much of it spent with Marie France Vellieux, a friend of Bonnie’s from her time living in Iran until after the revolution there, and someone we have loved seeing when we have returned to Europe.
We had the better part of our time with her scouting out the Paris that has changed little since we were last there a decade ago and enjoying her food and company. As a bit of a preview for what was in store for us on the canals, we stayed in a hotel that happened to be but a hundred feet from The Arsenal, a marina off the Seine entered through a lock close to the Bastille and filled with canal boats from all over Europe.
We took a couple of trains to the town of Decize beside the Loire River in central France where the Loire meets the Canal Lateral a la Loire and where we would spend most of the next twelve days. Decize is a dating old town dating back Roman times when Julius Caesar settled a dispute there. Here’s a picture of ‘Malaga,” a 12 year old Nicols canal boat about 32 feet long and made of fiberglass with two heads and three staterooms, one of which is used for storage.
We set off on the Canal Lateral which runs along beside the Loire, though most of the time the river is out of sight of the canal. These canals were engineered and dug in the 1830’s as the rivers themselves were often too unpredictable and rapid for barges and boats. So the canals were developed with locks to accommodate the changes in the altitude of the canals as they follow beside the rivers. Most of the locks are automatic and operate at the pull of a cord that triggers the opening and closing of the gates and the sluices which let the water in or out, but others have lock-keepers who crank open and close the gates and sluices and are often college students working over the summer. On average we probably went through 6 to 10 locks a day.
The canals had tow paths beside them for horses or mules to pull the barges along, and most are now paved and wonderful to ride bikes on. Any day we would probably see fifty people ride by, some on high speed racing bikes, others carrying paniers or bags on their bikes as they were traveling longer distances and camping over night, and others just families our for a day cruise along the canal. We rode most days ourselves, often into town to get bread or other supplies, or just along to the next lock where we would come back on the boat.
And we could stop anywhere. Sometimes it was in a small marina with a lot of other boats, mostly for charter, sometimes it was just beside a nice town with other boats on the canal. Sometimes it was just a bollard beside the canal or even tied to a tree at a nice shaded lunch spot or overnight.
Our favorite town on the canal trip was Paray-le-Monial, a small town with a very strong religious orientation. When we pulled in, there was a religious revival finishing up just down the canal from where we tied up. We found several monestaries and convents when bicycling around town, but most of all the town is dominated by the Romanesque Basilica, an enormous structure with adjoining buildings and gardens which has been a focus for pilgrims for centuries.
We loved riding around the town and up the hill leading out of town where the monestaries were located.
Most of the canals when in the countryside are beautifully lined with trees, there are breaks in these where the famous Charolait cows roam the fields, or old industrial sites perch next to the water, as is the case with an old pottery and its enormous kiln.
We transitioned to the Canal Du Centre and continued on to Montceau-les-mines, a larger city with a long mining history now mostly disappeared. But the city is large enough to have four swing or draw bridges we slid quietly under on our way to the marina where we spent the night in the middle of town.
From there we went one more day to St-Leger-Sur-Dheune where we caught a taxi to Chagny and then the TGV back to Paris at something like 150 miles an hour. There we really had little more than a day to attempt seeing the Henri Cartier-Bresson Museum and finding it closed, lunched in the Marais or old Jewish section that we particularly liked, and finally walking the length of the Tuilleries Gardens before collapsing near the entrance to the Louve.
Great story telling!
Can you share with us the company name of the canal boat charter agency?
Much appreciated. Welcome back to blog world, you were missed.
Cheers, Peter.
Hi Peter, Thanks for your comment and sorry to be so late to reply. We saw two charter bases while we were on the canals. Le Boat and Locaboat, but our friends bought their boat out of Nicols. All three have different boats so it’s best to check their websites out.
ANOTHER GLORIOUS BLOG FROM MY FAVORITES.
AT THIS TIME, YOUR PHOTOS AND SHARING IS ALL I NEED FOR MY TRAVEL SCHEDULE.
WHAT CAMERA ARE YOU USING. I’VE NEVER SEEN PHOTOS THAT INCREDIBLE.
THANK YOU THANK YOU. LOVE. SUSAN
Wonderful, wonderful travel blog! Your story is very Interesting, photos are stunning. Thanks, Bonnie and Dave!