“Well, if you can do better…” Irritatingly, it turns out that he can. I am frantic, sweating, blushing and I want to disappear yet no sailor could fault my competent cursing. No problem then for me.Īs we hit the other bank (even French canals are not as wide as La Manche) I simultaneously discover that boats have no brakes and merely touching the wheel makes them zigzag wildly. Any fool can steer the Calypso, with its high-tech bow thrusters, Karsten promises. Swallowing my panic and with butterflies in my stomach I dashingly order the crew to cast off. We’re starting out from Hesse, a tiny village in the Lorraine region on the Canal de la Marne au Rhin, a waterway that we’ll be following to Boofzheim in Alsace where it joins the Rhine. The boat looks as big as the Queen Mary is he truly entrusting such a princely white leviathan to landlubbers like us? Although it’s difficult for me not to swell with pride, long-nursed dreams and present-day reality collide. On the first golden afternoon of our voyage I am promoted from mere motorist to the illustrious rank of captain when Karsten, the representative of the boat-hire company, hands me the keys to Calypso 35. Francophiles like us think we know the country well, but while exploring it by boat we have found a land even more pristine than down its quietest country lane. ‘There’s nothing,’ declared Ratty in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, ‘absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’ After voyaging for a week we are now not only (almost) seasoned mariners but can also imagine Ratty’s rapture if he had ever had the luck to idle blissfully through France. Maybe le mot juste would be pied-�-l’eau? My son Jim refills our fizzing glasses but our elevated mood is fuelled not so much by bubbly as by that buoyancy of being that springs from happy days with water under your feet.ĭid I say pied-�-terre? Our pad in the heart of Strasbourg has accompanied us from the high plateau of Lorraine through the forested Vosges mountains to the vineyards of Alsace. The sky is as blue as the Mediterranean and our waterside garden has unrivalled views of one of the loveliest cities in France. Our luxurious pied-�-terre enjoys a millionaire’s location at the very hub of Europe. A boating holiday along the Canal de la Marne au Rhin proved a voyage of discovery for Ray Kershaw and his family in a land where French and German cultures meet.
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