Barging Guide - France Today

There are some 8,500 kilometers of navigable waterways in France—5,280 miles of rivers and canals that offer pleasure travel of all kinds, from an hour-long jaunt on a Bateau-Mouche in the Seine in Paris or a day’s cruise down the Rhône to the adventure of a self-drive barge or the totally relaxed luxury of péniche-hôtels that ply the historic canals of Burgundy and the south of France. It’s possible to travel from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean on the water, and Alsace, Champagne, the Loire, the Lot and the Dordogne are among many other regions that can be explored at the leisurely pace of a barge or a boat, afloat on the fabulous waterways of France.

Once Upon a French Canal…

"The waterways of France are sensational,” says Richard Parsons. “Nowhere else in the world are they so beautiful.” Certainly no one else can speak with more authority about them than Parsons, the English enthusiast who is universally credited with launching the pleasure barging phenomenon in France.

The Pleasantest Trip

The good life in the slow lane on the Canal du Midi

“There is nothing,” said Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, “half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” True enough. But add to that assertion “on France’s Canal du Midi” and it gets even better.

Burgundy At Its Best

It was a coup de foudre for my parents Nick and Jeannie Chambers when they first set eyes on a beautiful converted Dutch barge on the Canal du Nivernais in Burgundy several years ago.

Cruising the Charente

Here we were, gathered in the quiet town of Jarnac on a beautiful August afternoon, a motley crew of American and French sailors—boaters might be more accurate—with one former U.S. Navy officer among us.