GETAWAY T
ON THE 200th anniversary of her death, explore some of the places where Jane Austen (right) lived and wrote some of her most popular novels.
Stay for four nights at gorgeous Abingworth Hall in West Sussex, visit her home at Chawton and listen to a dramatic reading from Emma at Box Hill.
Book your stay with HF Holidays, full board from £615, departing on May 1. For more information visit hfholidays.co.uk or call 0345 470 7558. JET off on a seven-night holiday to the Dominican Republic staying at the three-star E&J Boutique Residences.
The price, from £797, includes return flights from Manchester Airport on March 7 and seven nights’ accommodation in a Junior Penthouse room on a self-catering basis.
Book online at traveltrolley. co.uk or call 0208 843 4400. HE age-old phrase “‘tis better to travel well than to arrive” might well have been coined with French river boating in mind. Chugging gently along sundappled waterways in shimmering Monet landscapes, going nowhere fast – what’s not to love?
Long on our wish list, my husband and I finally got to tick it off with a seven-day cruise along the River Charante.
As it happened, our time there coincided with Euro 2016. Such a detail might escape many holidaymakers to this most visited country on Earth; not the good man.
An inveterate football fan, there was no way the delights of river boating – even along what was once described by French king Henry IV as “the loveliest stream in my kingdom” – were going to distract him from the beautiful game.
To this end he’d checked out in advance every town and village lining our route for hostelries screening the main event.
From the off, things augured well with a satin-smooth ferry crossing and a leisurely drive through rural south-western France to the port town of Jarnac where our river boat awaited. One look around what was to be our floating home for a week was enough to banish any misgivings about cabin fever on board.
Sleeping up to six, Le Boat Caprice features a fully equipped kitchen, living/ dining area, two en suite cabins, and an outdoor swim platform. Upstairs, the sundeck comes with ample seating for al fresco dining, and enough space to stretch out with sunscreen, paperbacks and chilled drinks.
For all their heft, these vessels are so easy to handle that no previous experience is necessary. Following a hands-on demonstration from a Le Boat operative, we were ready to set sail– except that the Ireland v Sweden match was being televised live in a pub up the road.
Of course, we could have just sailed off and tuned in with the connectivity onboard – but that was never going to happen. Onwards then to L’Union café bar on Jarnac’s Grande Rue where, language barriers instantly surmounted, we whooped and hollered with the locals as the game unfolded.
Then back to the boat and the serious business of getting from one match screening to the next without distraction en route. Some hope.
Our first, and most sublimely ubiquitous distraction was, of course, the river itself.
With a history as ancient and venerable as its surroundings – excavations of the riverbed show that its waters have been navigated since Neolithic times – the Charante was, for centuries, an important commercial waterway, providing links with shipping routes for the transportation of regional produce such as butter, cognac and wine.
But this changed in the 1950s with the rise of recreational boating.
Now navigable for 91 miles between Angouleme and Rochefort through a landscape of vineyards and pasture, historic towns and sleepy little villages, the Charante has been given over entirely to river tourism even if, thankfully, there is nothing remotely touristy about the countryside through which it flows.
Having manoeuvred our way downstream through three locks (an