France by Boat - The River Baïse

Once upon a time, in the hamlet of Moncrabeau, there was a cuckold with no legs who jumped over a high wall in pursuit of his wife’s lover. This is the same commune where the ‘Queen of England’ came to resolve a diplomatic incident over rugby, and famously informed the mayor: “I am going to touch your prunes.” If you believe this nonsense you will believe anything, which would make you welcome in Moncrabeau, the ‘village of liars’. Every year, on the first Sunday of August, people come from miles around to dress up in medieval costumes and tell silly stories. The most imaginative is crowned King of Liars, paraded around the streets, and deposited on a throne of stone. The tale of the Queen and her love of prunes currently has top billing on a notice board outside the mairie, along with a photograph of a lady who bears a passing resemblance to Queen Elizabeth, and a portly chap who looks more like François Mitterrand than Prince Philip.

For the rest of the year, nothing much happens in Moncrabeau, which is how the locals like it. This is your quintessential French country idyll of old stone houses, narrow lanes, flowers everywhere and views over the green hills and meadows of Gascony. The village (population 200, including five Anglais) has all that is deemed necessary for a simple life—a decent restaurant, a bar, a boulangerie, a post office and a hairdresser. The addition of an open-air swimming pool is the icing on the gâteau.

It is possible to drive here, providing you are adept at navigating a maze of country roads that meander aimlessly over hills and dales and seem to arrive at villages more by luck than judgement. A more pleasurable way is to drift along a narrow, winding river called the Baïse in a pénichette, a gaily painted floating caravan with all mod cons.

When first mate Claire and I set off from Agen (once declared the happiest town in France by a poll in L’Express) we had no intention of sailing on the Baïse. We had never even heard of it.

DIVERSION

The plan was to mosey along a canal for a few miles, drop down through a double lock to the Garonne, sail across to the Lot, and head for a nautical festival in the town of Casseneuil. Simple, really. Except there wasn’t enough water in the Garonne to get across it, due to low rainfall. We learned this from the wife of a lock-keeper, who suggested a diversion on the Baïse which she promised would lead us through beautiful countryside to charming villages.

We considered her advice over dinner on the terrace of a brasserie overlooking the canal, while contemplating the warm glow of the setting sun on still water. I suppose the diversion was the maritime equivalent of road works, but without the stress. We had already perfected the Gallic shrug of nonchalance. If France in her wisdom had decided we should explore the Baïse rather than the Lot, so be it.

This is one of the great attractions of pootling along inland waterways at a maximum speed of 6 mph—after a while a zen-like calm prevails and time becomes as hazy as morning mist on passing cornfields. If Degas had been on board, he would have had plenty of time to paint the countryside at his leisure. I recalled a mantra from childhood that summed up the ethos: ‘Don’t hurry, don’t worry, and don’t forget to smell the flowers.’

This was after the drama of negotiating our first canal locks, of course. Years of sailing an old wooden boat off the west coast of Scotland had not prepared me for being pitched about like a cork in a demented washing machine on spin cycle. Until you get the hang of automatic locks, the experience of being thrashed about in one can be unnerving.

Then you work out how to ease the boat in without pranging it, where to fix the ropes, and how to motor calmly out with sang froid. After a while a sense of assurance and adventure kicks in, and you begin to feel like Columbus en route to the New World.

In fact we were heading for a very old world, of half-timbered villages that have changed little since they were on the front line of three centuries of hostilities between England and France. Fact and fiction blend easily in this bucolic backwater, for this was the old stomping ground of D’Artagnan and his brotherhood of Musketeers.

If anywhere conjures images of Dumas’ swashbuckling heroes, it is the town of Nérac, the 16th-century stronghold and court of Henri III of Navarre, who became the popular King Henri IV of France. We parked our pénichette where his royal barge would have been moored, beneath the ramparts of his château which looks like a film set for Romeo and Juliet. From here we had a fine view of an old stone bridge that is exactly the kind of place you would expect to find the musketeers bravely holding off the baddies while D’Artagnan smuggles His Majesty to safety. By moonlight you can almost see the rapiers flashing.

Secrets and surprises

By this time we had made friends. Messing about in boats is a sociable pastime, and two couples from Picardy who had helped us through a lock earlier in the day invited us on board their motor cruiser for apéritifs. They were seasoned river travellers, and Alain their captain said we had done the right thing in leaving the canal for the meandering shallows of the Baïse. “Rivers like this are much more interesting than canals, because no-one tells them where to go,” he said. “They make their own way through the country-side, and with so many twists and turns they always have secrets and surprises.”

A pleasant surprise awaited us in the square outside King Henri’s palace, where we discovered the restaurant L’Escadron Volant. The dark wood panelling and cheery ambiance of L’Escadron promised good traditional fare and friendly service, and so it proved. When in Nérac, this is the place for dishes fit for a king.

Another advantage of floating along à la pénichette is that there is a fully equipped kitchen on board. With fresh bread, cheap wine and wondrous hams and cheeses readily available along the way, lunch in a quiet backwater is an assured pleasure.

Our favourite spot was beneath the spreading boughs of an ash tree by Vianne, an ‘English’ bastide or planned village created in the 13th century by representatives of Edward I. Many of the ramparts and watchtowers are still standing, giving visitors to its narrow, cobbled streets the illusion of stepping back in time.

It was on awakening from a siesta that I spotted a giraffe towering above the village, swaying in a gentle breeze. It was actually an inflatable caricature and star attraction of a weekly market. The old square was crowded with stalls selling wine, cheeses, hams, home-made dresses, and handicrafts including a feather pen in the shape of a blue ostrich which I was unable to resist.

Edward I would have been gratified to find a continuing British presence in Vianne, notably in the Café des Maronniers where the proprietor, a builder from Shropshire, and his partner from Aberdeen were dispensing mountains of mussels and chips to appreciative customers.

After all the excitement, it was bliss to return to our quiet haven on the river, which we found we were sharing with two ducks, a brilliant blue kingfisher, and a mysterious ripple in the water that turned out to be an otter. There are times when happiness is not wishing to be anywhere else, and this was one of them.

CORN AND SUNFLOWERS

Yet the yellow bicycles on the foredeck beckoned. Next morning we pored over maps and planned a route to a village called Xaintrailles, because the name appealed to us. A long, gradual ascent on a quiet road through fields of corn and sunflowers brought us to a one-horse (and two-combine harvesters) hamlet with a fortified château that looked like the kind of place where knights in shining armour would congregate to rescue damsels in distress. This may not be so far from the truth, because in days of yore it belonged to a companion of Joan of Arc.

The bonus of cycling up a hill is coming back down again. A glorious descent on another empty country road, free-wheeling most of the way, made us feel like characters in our own French film: Claire et son ami à la campagne.

All was not sweetness and light, alas. Having mastered the art of pootling in and out of locks, I misjudged one horribly and ended up trying to fit the boat in sideways. This never works. The problem was a strong current from an adjacent weir, which required a burst of acceleration to overcome it. I learned this from a sympathetic bystander, who was renting the vacant lock-keeper’s cottage for a family holiday. “I did exactly the same the first time I came here,” he assured me. “You’re not alone, monsieur. You’re the fourth to do that this week.” This was Tuesday.

Happily such dramas were rare. Mostly our sedate progress was interrupted only by conversations with fishermen on the river banks, which were usually about food and rugby. One elderly chap said he had played for les Bleus against England in the 1950s, and recalled that the game had been played sportingly. “We were amateurs then, we played for pleasure and honour.”

He admitted that to his regret, England had won deservedly. Clearly he was not in the running to be Moncrabeau’s King of Liars.

How to get there:

Rail Europe has return fares from London Waterloo to Agen by Eurostar and TGV from £99.

www.raileurope.co.uk

Boat hire:

Locaboat Holidays (www.locaboat.com) has pénichette river boats for two people for a week from £532 in low season. Larger boats sleeping up to 8 from £1,869. Book through Andrew Brock Travel Tel: 01572 821330