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Cruising in the Loire Valley
By Dave Bowers
FACTBOX
Dave Bowers travelled down the Cher with Middlesex-based European Waterways (www.gobarging.com) with whom a six-night break starts at £1,635 per person.
He travelled to France courtesy of Eurostar (www.eurostar.com) where return trips cost from £55.
European Waterways: 0178 448 2439
Eurostar: 08705 186 186
UNTIL recently my only intimacy with a canal barge was during a visit to a pub in the Black Country which had half a narrow-boat inserted in its bar.
That had its attractions obviously and may have presented a rose-tinted view, but I am also familiar with the barge’s industrial heritage.
And I took geography and history for at least a year – so I also know what a canal is.
I know why they were designed and I’m familiar with the vessels which toiled up and down them and the methods by which those craft were powered.
Throw into the equation that hard physical work is an anathema to me and that I would always eschew backpacking in favour of a five-star resort and it’s easy to see why my jaw dropped when my wife informed me she had booked us on a canal holiday in France.
Visions of shire horses and the need to haul my not insubstantial frame up mountainous lock walls filled my tiny brain.
But like ‘Fings’, barges ‘ain’t what they used to be’. Our home for six nights was the Nymphea – an 80ft long vessel, with three staterooms for a total of six guests.
The Nymphea. |
There was not a single lump of coal visible – though there was an abundance of timber, in the form of the boat’s varnished mahogany interior.
It was a week for banishing myths: barges no longer rely on horses, coal or steam power to move them along; the French aren’t all surly and don’t smell of onions and garlic; and I don’t sit around in the sun enjoying being waited on.
Our waterway for the week was the River Cher, a tributary of the better-known Loire, in the eponymous valley.
The Loire was one of the country’s main ‘thoroughfares’ for around 2,000 years, but sadly, as a result of bureaucratic incompetence and an ‘environmentally-conscious’ long-term plan to increase the fish population in the river by a reduction in dredging, much of it is no longer navigable by anything other than a canoe.
Indeed in some places it’s so shallow even Peter Crouch wouldn’t be covered by water were he to lie on the riverbed.
The same is true of some parts of the Cher, but an experienced captain can ensure a shallow drafted vessel, like the Nymphea, can meander peacefully down its delightful length, taking advantage of the slightly deeper channels.
I say "like the Nyphea"; in fact it’s "only the Nymphea" as the European Waterways boat is the only one of its size working the river.
That ensures other water traffic is minimal and therefore affords the most relaxing time it is possible to have without the use of recreational drugs … apparently.
That’s not to say all of one’s stay on-board the barge is of the feet-up, drinking-wine, while sedately cruising variety. It’s true, several hours of each day are set aside for this exact purpose, but the holiday also includes trips to some of the most spectacular chateaux in the whole country.
The Chateau de Chenonceau, for example, is one of the most picturesque – and most pictured castles – you’ll ever see.
Chateau de Chenonceau. |
The 16th century party palace was built by Thomas Bohier for the French king Henri II. He gave it to his lover, Diane de Poitiers, who, judging by the oil painting of her inside, was no oil painting.
She was subsequently kicked out by Henri II’s widow Catherine de Médicis, whose hand can be seen on many of the country’s most beautiful architectural examples.
Credit to de Poiters though – she didn’t go running off to Figaro with tales of being usurped by her ‘love rival’. Apart from the odd execution, things were much more civilised in the 16th century.
Chenonceau is noted for the integral five-arch bridge – ‘The Gallery’ - which spans the river, under which the Nymphea sails in both directions during its leisurely meanderings.
Chenonceau is also home to a 16th century farm; spectacular gardens; an array of period furniture, tapestries and precious art works; and the world’s sweatiest souvenir shop, housed as it is in the oldest part of the chateau, the Marques Tower, which wasn’t razed by Bohier during construction. Oh, and an enormous amount of tourists in high season.
At times, the chateau’s popularity means a wait to enter some of the smaller rooms, and plenty of climbing stairs, as neither Bohier nor de Médicis had the necessary foresight to allow room for the later installation of an escalator. But it’s well worth the time and the effort.
Chateau de Chenonceau. |
Japanese tourists are shipped in daily from Paris by their thousands so it’s better to visit late in the day when they’re scrambling for their coaches and the return journey.
It is this sort of valuable insight and guidance which makes the Nymphea’s skipper, Leigh Wootton, so invaluable.
He accompanies the excursion, in fact he drives the minibus, but is also a knowledgeable and entertaining tour guide. It may be pigeon-holing Leigh to describe him merely as the boat’s captain, or ‘skipper’ as I took to calling him – after living in Portsmouth for 35 years I’m well versed in the nautical parlance.
He is part-captain, part-tour guide, part-chauffeur, part-raconteur and part-entertainer. He possesses infinite patience with his passengers even when they mislay their return train ticket with minutes before it is due to depart from Tours.
He is the consummate professional and it came as no surprise to us when we learned he was the skipper chosen to captain the barge during the six months’ filming for the BBC’s Rick Stein’s French Odyssey, which aired in 2005.
Chateau de Chenonceau. |
Get a few wines inside of him on the final night captain’s dinner and Leigh may even tell you a few tales – there are others more interesting than "Rick Stein was a nice bloke".
During his 20-odd years plying his trade on the canals and rivers of France Leigh has skippered for celebrity chefs, high-flying diplomats, politicians and even one of the world’s richest men, renowned for launching a huge computer software company. But we’re not allowed to name names.
To that impressive list he can now add a fat journalist and his culture-vulture wife.
Having Leigh as your guiding hand during the holiday ensures you don’t waste time visiting pointless tourist traps.
OK, Chenonceau is a huge tourist attraction – one of the most popular in France – but some of the other places visited might not warrant a second glance when flicking through a guidebook.
The chateau at Villandry is a chateau – and the Loire Valley has hundreds. But Villandry also has the world-renowned Renaissance gardens, Leigh’s favourite Loire gardens – and one can see why at first glance.
Again dating back to the 16th century – although a 12th century castle had been present on the site before the present chateau was built – Villandry was in danger of falling into disrepair when, in 1906, it was bought by an up-and-coming Spanish scientist, Dr Joachim Carvallo, who dedicated himself to restoring the chateau to its previous glories.
Chateau at Villandry. |
His great-grandchildren carry on his work today and his restoration of the gardens has to be seen to be believed. There are four: the Ornamental Gardens, with its symbolic shaping – the first four squares visible from the house representing four versions of love; the Water Garden with its stepped waterway back to the front of the chateau; the long Herb Garden, which contains enough flavours to have Stein give up his residence of Padstow; and the Kitchen Garden, aesthetically stunning but practical enough to host 40 species of vegetable – no potatoes though, as that would not be representative of a 16th century French garden apparently. Bang goes the frites!
The Cher is a tranquil setting for a cruise. When it’s time to moor up for the evening the surface of the water is generally like the proverbial millpond. And during the day, while cruising, the scenery provides ample distraction from which ever pot boiler one happens to be reading while topping up the tan out on deck.
Chateau at Villandry. |
One needs to take advantage of this ‘chill’ time as, in addition to the walking and stair climbing, there is much eating and wine tasting to be done.
Our chef for the week was 19-year-old Cecile: and don’t let her youth lull you into thinking it would all be burger and chips – she’d have none of it. "McDonalds? Pah!" she said on more than one occasion.
The quality of food and wine onboard is outstanding – as one would expect of a French chef using all local produce. Each lunchtime, once the barge had moored, there was a salad buffet with two local wines and two types of cheese as a second course.
In the evening, Cecile would ‘knock up’ a four-course fantasy meal while Leigh would regale fellow travelers with tales of how two more wines and two more cheeses came to be so-named.
The French are, of course, renowned for being proud of their culinary heritage and one would imagine were there to be a crisis on board, say an engine failure, Leigh and Cecile’s attitude would be "let’s have some more wine and cheese – everything will be OK in the morning". And it would be.
Leigh’s passion for everything Francais is never more obvious than with his knowledge of the local wines and wineries. During the week he took us to two wine-tastings, even managing to convert your correspondent from a non-wine drinking heathen into a gibbering wreck at one stage – "you aren’t meant to drink the whole glass," he informed me with a smile after I tested the ninth bottle offered to us.
Neither of these family-run, small businesses would be in a guidebook, though judging by the pallets piled up heading to a wine merchant in Massachusetts, the reputation has traveled far and wide.
But this is no extended booze cruise. This is a chance to increase one’s cultural experience – in my case wines and chateaux; in everybody else’s to experience life in troglodyte caves and on a millennia-old waterway.
On Cecile’s night off we were treated to a meal out at a family-run restaurant, in troglodyte caves. Papa runs the winery next door, daughter and son-in-law provide the expertise in the kitchen and Grandmama – in her mid 90s! – is front of house. You can’t buy this sort of experience – well, obviously you can, because we have. But I’m sure you understand my sentiment.
Chateau at Villandry. |
It is a week of contrast: the chateaux visits which leave you with what is known in my family as ‘tourist calves’, and the sheer luxury of doing nothing all morning except watching the riverbanks slide gently past at a pleasingly slow speed, while feeling like a celebrity as other tourists gather at the locks to witness the one narrowboat patrolling the Cher, like African natives at the first sign of a white trader.
Fortunately for them we didn’t take their cheese and then bind them and throw them into the hold to be sold to the next lockkeeper. In some areas, time has made us more civilised after all.
One other thing modern life has given us – in stark contrast to the leisurely pace of the Nymphea – is a transport system which can move us swiftly from one country to the next.
Forget airports. The best way to meet with Leigh, who picks up all his guests at Tours station, is to travel as we did, first class in the Eurostar to Lille – it’s worth the extra few bob for the feeling of doing something special – and transfer to Tours by the impressive French national railway service on board the TGV.
You’ll view South-West Trains in a completely different light – and it won’t be a positive thing…
Within a few hours of leaving St Pancras you’ll be unpacking in your cabin, staring out of portholes at the beautiful clear water and stripping off to go for a swim in the Cher.
My only regret about the week was that since our return nobody’s actually asked what the weather was like. I was desperate to tell somebody "It was sunny on Cher!".
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