A cruise on the river Charente.

Last year, in late September we decided to rent a houseboat for a week and cruised from Cognac to Angoul�me. The Charente is one of France's most beautiful river navigations.

After checking the boat equipment and technical points we set off on a peaceful cruise. We went past Hennessy cellars, the old town, and the Chateau where Fran�ois Ier was born. As we followed the course of the river, we stopped at our first lock. Operating locks is very easy and it makes it a pleasant break in the trip. On the Charente the locks are manual, and from Cognac to Angoul�me there aren't any lock-keepers so we operated them ourselves and were not restricted by timings.
At the beginning of our cruise there were four of us. Our daughter and her boyfriend were a great help to us in operating the locks until we got to Angoul�me ( 17 locks!)

Then further upstream of Cognac ,we passed the magnificent facade of the chateau of St Brice and decided to moor at a mooring point with a post to tie the boat up to. Some mooring points are not in good condition so you have to be careful when you get off the boat. From where we were, we had a spendid view of the chateau dominating the river banks.

We decided to have dinner on the terrace and sipped a glass of pineau while we were watching the sunset. We enjoyed the quietness of the place only interrupted by some ducks quacking! Feeding the ducks was also part of our ritual of being on the water.

After a good night's rest, and after taking a few photos of the sunrise, we continued our cruise at 10km per hour. The Charente meanders through picturesque towns and sleepy villages. Jarnac came to view. Jarnac is Fran�ois Mitterrand's birth place and it is also famous for its old buildings and distilleries. The Courvoisier factory is one of the best-known. We didn't make a stop at Jarnac but we could see parts of the town that can't be seen from the road. Then we passed through some locks. We all liked going through locks where we met interesting people from other boats and enjoyed having a chat with them.

We could go for a stroll along the tow path on one side of the canal. Then upstream of Jarnac, we made a stop at Bassac Abbaye. At the start of the 11th century Lord of Jarnac and his wife decided to found a monastery on a branch of the Charente. The abbey church has a high facade in the Saintonge style. The monastery suffered the hardship of the 100th years War and the Wars of Religion but the church and the abbey were rebuilt in the 17th and 18th century and monks still live in the abbey .

Then after leaving Bassac, the river curves around St Simeux which is a magnificent village at 50 metres above the Charente surrounded by splendid scenery. There we watched a grey heron fishing on top of a waterfall. The surroundings of the Charente provide a chance to observe a wide variety of aquatic flora and fauna. Then we went through a lock again and met Belgian people who were stopped in their cruise by an engine breakdown!! We had a chat with them and continued our cruise .As we were drifting gently through the countryside we passed under some humpback bridges. Then the river spreads into multiple waterways embracing green islets.

We stopped at one of them to visit the Fleurac paper mill and discovered how paper was made. It still uses the process of the 18th century. Hemp, flax, cotton are crushed and transformed into pulp. The sheets are laid out one by one, pressed and hung up in the air in a special room to dry. It was a very interesting guided tour.

Then back again on board now we headed off up Angoul�me where an unexpected event occured. Before mooring along the quay we got stuck in a pile of chippings just in the middle of the Charente and we couldn't get the boat to move.

Fortunately for us the owner of a " P�niche restaurant" nearby helped us using our rope and after some attempts at trying to reverse out we managed to get it to move and our daughter and her boyfriend disembarked. Of course they missed the 7.00pm train for Royan they were supposed to take! Then as time was getting on we decided to spend the night in a quiet place in Angoul�me near a lock.Angoul�me is a historic city with ramparts set on a hill above the Charente . It is also famous for its strip cartoon festival. The following day we got up early because we had tied up too close to the lock impeding traffic. We continued our cruise back to Cognac and made a stop at Trois Palice. There, we visited Letuffe factory which is famous for its chocolates. The visit ended up with chocolate tasting of course! Downstream of Trois Palice the silhouette of St Simeux came up. This time we decided to moor along the canal tow path and tied the boat up to a tree. We had a walk to the village with houses decorated with flowers and when we returned to the boat we had company, the dog of the pub " Le Gabarier". We walked together to the boat and the dog had a rest on the gangplank for a while.

After leaving our guest and further downstream of St Simeux a sleepy hamlet attracted us ashore. There, we wandered around and took some photos of the Roman church.

On our way back to Cognac we went through a lock followed closely behind by a Gabarre full of tourists. A gabarre is a flat-bottomed boat that used to be loaded with cereals, stone, eaux de vie, wood, metals, paper and felts. The boats were pulled by oxen or horses along the tow path. The gabarres gradually disappeared when the railway arrived, and today they are rebuilt for boat trips.We ended up our cruise mooring at the same pontoon we had used on the first day of our cruise, just in front of the Chateau of St Brice, sipping a glass of wine on the terrace, raising our glass to the people on other boats which went past, feeding the ducks and we enjoyed having dinner to the sound of water lapping against the boat.

PS: Click on the thumbnail to see the full size picture.