The slow boat to heaven
...or why there’s no better way to drink in the Loire’s glories than on a luxury canal cruise
The BRIARe canal, dug by 12,000 labourers between 1604 and 1640 to link the Upper Loire valley and the Seine, is the oldest in France.
Once a major trade and transport artery, nowadays the Briare loops through the middle of bucolic nowhere.
As soon as the opulent barge Renaissance had crossed the Loire on M. eiffel’s prettily ornate aqueduct and headed north into the ravishing countryside, none of us passengers knew where we were. According to the map placed in my lavish suite, however, by the end of the week we’d cruised about an inch, which was roughly the same distance I’d had to let out the belt of my jeans. I was also pampered to within an inch of my life. The 128 ft-long Renaissance was converted from a working barge into a sort of Royal Barge in 1960 and upgraded again in 2016 (wifi was excellent).
Looking after us four (maximum eight) passengers were five crew: a bearded young captain, a cherub-faced deckhand-cum-driver, an unfailingly modest and wonderful chef, an english rose hostess
and a French housekeeper straight out of ’Allo’ ’Allo! called mimi. They treated us like minor royalty, with mimi actually curtsying to us.
Along the Briare’s 35- mile length, which took us a week, we passed another vessel roughly once every other day. otherwise it was just us. occasionally the pointy, ornate roof of a chateau could be glimpsed through the beech, sycamore and plane trees lining the towpath.
The muted thrum of the 250 horsepower diesel engine propelling us through the water was inaudible when you weren’t listening for it. Far louder was birdsong. Concealed among the unfurling leaves and creamy blossoms, blackbirds, thrushes and nightingales celebrated the green surge of early summer, while egrets and herons paced the shallows or stood around looking vacant as if on fentanyl.
Hawks made hay. Doting mother mallards and their chicks had to accelerate and alter course only slightly to evade the renaissance’s mighty, but slowmoving, prow.
Each evening we tied up in, or near, some picturesquely dying village with an unpronounceable name. At one of these, a stupefyingly excellent jazz duo had driven three hours from Paris to perform for us during cocktail hour.
once, when everyone else had gone to bed, i stood on the moonlit deck and listened to a nightingale’s singing clarified by the reflective surface of a lake.
The renaissance has four airconditioned suites below deck. ours was ‘ moliere’ ( French author of Tartuffe, or the imposter), a light and spacious 265 cream- carpeted square feet with four large portholes just above the waterline.
only one other of the remaining three suites was occupied. mary
and Bert hailed from san Francisco. All told, we shared six ruminative breakfasts, 11 fourcourse haute cuisine meals and numberless bottles of France’s most prestigious wines with this delightful American couple. (once we’d agreed to keep President Trump off the conversational menu, all was well.)
Bert was a wine and rock music buff. At the first dinner together, he’d put on a CD. ‘Tina Turner all right for you?’ he asked us as we tucked into the starter. Fortunately, it was. Unfortunately, Bert had an aversion to goat’s cheese.
Mornings we walked our expanding waistlines along the towpath. Bicycles were available for the agile. Bert tried one, but afterwards was highly critical of the gear ratios.
Afternoons we climbed aboard the Mercedes for a side trip. Monday was a wine tasting at sancerre led by none other than old M. Bourgeois, the winemaker, himself. M. Bourgeois: ‘Any questions?’ Bert: ‘Will you marry me?’ Tuesday was a tour of the famous pottery factory of Gien.
Thursday brought a visit to the stupendous, moated Chateau de la Bussiere. on her knees in the walled kitchen garden, delving in the soil with her horny hands, was the elderly Countess.
Who did we think were the prettiest, French girls or english girls, she wondered? Bert argued strenuously for French girls. The Anglophile Countess judged the contest about even.
Friday afternoon was spent touring the immense royal Palace of Fontainebleau. in the courtyard, russians were queuing to get married. After a week on the renaissance, it felt odd to be in such regal surroundings without someone enquiring every five minutes whether we wanted anything.
so pampered had we become, we were overjoyed to return to that lovely watery spot (we knew not where exactly) where the renaissance awaited us, and to dear Mimi, standing at the top of the gangplank with a silver tray of pre- dinner Cosmopolitans and a bobbed curtsy.
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