Lori and I were on our second passports with less than 5 years remaining and they were still unused, the first had expired without a stamp. We had envisioned visiting Europe with my parents for years. We had guide books to Italy and Scotland that were no longer current enough to be useful. We dreamed of leisurely walking tours in the Scottish highlands or bicycling through Tuscany. We could imagine going from Inn to Inn, milling around villages in the country side. We anticipated spending quality time enjoying good company without the imposition of projects we have joined to participate in in the past.
We have fond memories of time spent with my parents. They have come to spend weeks with us helping to build our house or finish a project. We have made visits to their house to work on projects that needed to be done. These projects were always gratifying, some of my favorite memories. The work was good, we got a lot accomplished and we had good company, still I would like once to spend time exploring with them at leisure, not working on a schedule.
My parents are getting older and are not as able to travel as they were. We realize that there are things that are important to us that we are missing. If we keep waiting till tomorrow, tomorrow will never come and those opportunities will be gone for good. Some of the types of trips we had considered in the past were no longer practical, since my father suffered bouts of issues with his back that could at times limit his mobility, but we were still interested in a trip that fulfilled that basic desire for exploration and was not limited to ingesting sites tailored for consumption.
October is about the earliest I would be available to travel since I had fire fighting responsibilities as part of my job. The previous years fire season had been active so we were financially ahead and we had our 25th anniversary coming up this October as another excuse. A call confirmed that my parents were excited about planning a trip together, now just to decide where and what to do.
My father had purchased a timeshare that could be traded for timeshares in Europe that we were perusing for ideas when I noticed narrowboats in England. Timing wasn’t optimal, a cold wet fall in England didn’t sound so appealing. Much to my surprise, canals and inland waterway travel was common throughout much of Europe and France has about 2700 miles of inland canals.
Boat travel from a practical stand point seemed to meet our needs, but it also evokes some romantic notions. We could move at our own pace through the countryside and villages along the waterway, we could enjoy a routine and not have to regularly relocate, we could cook and a boat would accommodate travel even if mobility was an issue. Considering the time of year we were going to travel we settled on France as a destination due to the climate and the numerous hire boat operators and regions available.
We haven’t had the same travel experiences since I traveled with my parents as a child. They have been traveling as part of retirement, mostly with guided tours. It is a convenient way to travel, there are some bargains to be had and the details are dealt with. For the last 6 years Lori and I have been motorcycle touring without a great deal of planning other than a general direction, a map and reliance on the ability to cover a lot of ground to give serendipity the opportunity to provide insights.
As the first trip with my parents as an adult and what could be the only one, I wanted this trip to meet all of our needs. As I consider the logistics and our desires for an envisioned trip, I develop parameters, these included; boat availability with 2 cabins, potential for decent weather, a travel path that included numerous towns and villages, and ideally a one way tour or a loop to avoid backtracking. Backtracking turned out to be a limiting factor for most of the hire boat operators. There are 8 hire boat cruising regions in France, but only a couple that have multiple rental boat bases in a single region, which would accommodate a one way rental, the loops would take more time than we had available. This narrowed the search down to the Canal du Midi and the Canal de Nivernias.
We choose the Canal du Midi since it is the furthest south and passed though a variety of towns, villages and cities as part of the route we had planned. We completed our Itinerary with a plan to fly into Paris and rent an apartment there for a few days, then take a train to Toulouse before going on to Castelnaudary to board our boat.
We have some friends who are from the Languedoc region of France & they let us know that in the countryside people may not be able to speak anything but French and that it would be good if we knew a little bit of the language. By June all of our planning was done and we just had to work and study French until we were to leave in October.
*****
This is the end of the second installment in the ongoing series that details our introduction to river cruising on the European waterways and to our purchase and outfitting of our own boat to for travel and living in Europe. If you are interested in being notified of future installment releases, Subscribe to this series in the sidebar on the right.
If you missed the first installment it can be found under the category “A New Adventure-Series”
Thank you for sharing your adventures. I love your blog. Ps I want your beret. 😁