Follow in the wake of "Two Women and A Boat"
17/09/2008
Last July two intrepid women, Michelle Cornell and Hannah Shapiro, set off to 'test drive' France's waterways in a canal boat for Mature Times readers. They wanted to find out whether it was physically possible for older people to cope with the so-called 'easy-to manage locks' - which, unlike the UK, are either electronic or attended by a keeper. Michelle told us what happened ...
"I had long dreamed of spending a holiday cruising along in a canal boat in France, but was put off by what I imagined to be the physical impossibility of navigating the boat and ‘manning the locks’. It all seemed rather daunting and - dare I say - male.
Then I happened to speak with a British, family-run boating holiday business called France Afloat. Steve Adams, one of the Directors, told me that “driving the boat is easy, and locks in France are either electronic or run by a lock keeper”. So I and my fellow traveller Hannah set forth to test his theory hands-on and report back to the Mature Times.
We arrived in the little village of Vermenton late one Saturday afternoon in mid-July and headed for "our boat" - called Alisa. She was about twenty eight feet long, with a pointed bow and looked like a modern motorboat rather than the long canal boats I had seen in Britain. I began to feel anxious looking at the two steering wheels, the instruction manuals and the map. Were we really going to be able to do this - AND relax?
We stowed our gear on the boat before making a quick dash to the supermarket for provisions - wonderful local produce and wine. The next morning Steve arrived bright and early for our "demo". It was raining, I was nervous and I wishing our start might be postponed. No such luck. In one hour flat we had learnt the ropes and how to read the map. We chatted about a possible route for our one week journey but were calmly informed: "The whole point is not to plan too much.” Although we soon came to appreciate this wisdom, just getting through a lock in one piece seemed ambitious at this stage!
Then suddenly we were off, with Hannah at the helm, and Steve offering steering tips. I felt giddy with excitement. We were grown-ups playing ‘Swallows and Amazons’, and as we glided under a bridge heading towards our first lock, I was already loving it. The water, the sky, the countryside and its reflections, breathing in the moist fresh air, feeling tree branches tickle my shoulders, listening to the gentle silence - these first few kilometres were a revelation. I wondered why everyone didn’t see France in this way.
Before we knew it we had sailed - zigzagged would be more accurate - into our first lock and tied our boat to the side while the lock keeper turned the handles, the water gushing in. Done. With that, Steve hopped off the boat: “Call me if you need me!”
I gulped. It was just us now - two women and a boat.
We had set our course for a six hour sail to Auxerre, about 20 kilometres and fourteen locks away. We began to get a sense that nothing that bad could really happen as you travel at 5 mph, so if you have a bump getting in or out of the lock, it’s not a huge problem (except to one’s increasing boating pride). The boat was also a lot lighter than I imagined, and we could push her with our hands or pull her round with the ropes very easily.
Steering in a straight line was an all together trickier affair. After pirouetting through our first few locks - with a red-faced Hannah almost going in backwards on one occasion - we got the knack. Unlike the bigger movements of driving a car, smaller more frequent little adjustments left-right are used with a boat. Ironically, the more relaxed you are, and in sync with the slow pace on the water, the easier it is to steer.
All the locks we travelled through were manned by lock keepers, who ranged from students doing a summer job to older folk who lived in the little houses. They were all were polite and laid back, often selling their own produce such as courgettes, honey, cherries, walnuts, preserves and wine.
And the locks turned out to be quite straightforward. If the gates were open, we could sail straight in, tie the boat, wait for the water to either enter or leave and then either rise or descend. Once the gates had opened, we were away again into the open water.
Often we would share the locks and a good part of the day with one or two other boats. I loved the tacit teamwork, the camaraderie, the blurring of nationalities in a world where everyone is boater - or at least someone temporarily in charge of a boat. And mooring up wherever and whenever we wanted continually delighted me. Using our two spikes and little mallet, a few taps later we’d be parked in the most idyllic spot surrounded by trees with fields of crops and vineyards as far as the eye could see. We felt intimately connected to the world around us.
One particularly dramatic mooring place was at the end of our first day's sail to Auxerre. We nestled ten minutes from the city centre - and it was Bastille Day. It felt really special to share such an important occasion and see the St Etienne Cathedral transformed by heavy hanging shrouds of smoke from fireworks - a whiff of revolutionary days gone by.
The next day was a public holiday and a boat parked next to us was attracting some curious looks because it had a mini parked up on deck. Our neighbour was Brian Ribbans, 71 and his wife Pat from Suffolk. He told us that due to the uncertain UK property market, rather than buying a retirement home they had bought a boat last year and decided to travel (with mini) for a few years. He told me: “We’re looking forward to friends coming to visit this summer and we intend to moor up this winter near Rouen, which is just south of the frost line”. Sounds good to me Brian!
The region, of course, is a foodie’s paradise, and rather than eat out in restaurants we chose to visit the markets for our food: endless cheeses, tomatoes, strong shallots, and a speciality of the region ham persille - ham in white wine and parsley jelly. We fell in love with vanilla custard pastries. And, at the very heart of Burgundian wine territory as we were, there was always wine...
By now we loved our boat and our days were settling into a satisfying rhythm: a walk in to the village in the morning for bread and breakfast on the boat; setting sail about 9, then lunching on deck; a bit of exploring, a bit more sailing before mooring up late afternoon with supper usually on the boat; a stroll along the towpath before enjoying the long evening of luminous skies and water, reaching a peak at 10:30. Then to bed.
Life on the waterways of Burgundy is deliciously slow and absolutely nothing like real life. There’s a seductive sense of being at the heart of things, and of being lulled by the painterly beauty of the landscape and the canal itself. Days are measured by locks, villages and lingering meals.
At the end of our week and landlubbers once more, we caught glimpses of our canal from the hills we’d seen from our boat. In a week we had gone the distance that could have been driven in an hour, but such voyages as these are not measured in miles.
Follow in our wake ..."
France Afloat are offering Mature Times readers a 15%discount. This applies to the Vermenton, Marigny, Gannay, Capestang and Moissac bases, and is available for the remainder of this season and for 2009 onwards. Contact France Afloat on: 08700 110 538 (for the cost of a BT national rate call from the UK to France) or email Steve@FranceAfloat.com and quote: 'MT 2009'.
For more information visit the website below.