{"id":19904,"date":"2014-10-29T09:09:02","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T09:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/867-an-account-of-a-barge-cruise-in-low-season\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T21:03:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T21:03:02","slug":"867-an-account-of-a-barge-cruise-in-low-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/blog\/867-an-account-of-a-barge-cruise-in-low-season\/","title":{"rendered":"An account of a barge cruise in low season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Ten years ago, quite by chance, this retired couple from Marseilles became totally hooked on\u00a0<strong>canal boat holidays<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It might seem strange that someone who lives by the sea should prefer canals and rivers. I certainly never say no to a motorboat trip out to the little islands off the Marseilles coast, but the fact is that I fell in love with\u00a0<a title=\"Canal boat holidays\" href=\"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/boating-holidays\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">canal boat holidays<\/a>\u00a0about ten years ago. It happened pretty much by chance, when some friends invited my wife and I to go with them on the\u00a0<a title=\"Canal du midi boat hire\" href=\"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/boating-holidays\/france\/canal-du-midi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Canal du Midi<\/a>. Since then, we haven&#8217;t stopped \u2013 we&#8217;ve travelled all over France on a\u00a0<strong>P\u00e9nichette<\/strong><sup>\u00ae<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Twice a year, before and after the peak holiday season, we set off for some peace and quiet. We like to go as part of a fairly large group, though, with at least two other couples, because spending time with friends is what being on a boat&#8217;s all about. As time goes on, we travel further and further away from home and the Canal du Midi to explore different regions: the\u00a0<a title=\"cruising on the Canal du centre in Burgundy\" href=\"\/en\/boating-holidays\/france\/burgundy-nivernais\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Canal du Centre<\/a>, the Briare Canal and the Nivernais Canal, and also little rivers like the Ba\u00efse. Seeing Angers, Le Mans and Sabl\u00e9 from a boat is an unforgettable experience. We&#8217;ve just been sorry sometimes when the lock-keepers have already gone away for the winter, which means we have to navigate the locks ourselves! But on the other hand it&#8217;s very relaxing, and the advantage of low season is that you can get on with driving your boat and you don&#8217;t have to queue up at locks&#8230; It&#8217;s all a matter of preference.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our thanks to Yves Estienne for telling us about his travels on the rivers and canals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ten years ago, quite by chance, this retired couple from Marseilles became totally hooked on\u00a0canal boat holidays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[202],"class_list":["post-19904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-captain-stories","tag-regular"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19905,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19904\/revisions\/19905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverly.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}