John’s own special page!

The area of France where this river runs is very beautiful, the river has carved its way through the hills making deep ravines so we had steep cliffs and pretty villages perched on the sides of the cliff! But what made it perfect for us was the warm sunny weather, every day was perfect!

Three couples, Suzette’s two brothers and their wives, we all had different holidays but  met up in a small French village called Douelle  the pick up base for our boat.

The Lot river can be navigated from Luzech to Cregols, 128 km and has 14 locks. We did the whole river so went through 28!  We set off from the base upstream so the lock had to be filled after entering which rocked the boat so the rope holders had to hang on tightly! The driver of the day had to pull alongside to a small jetty prior to each lock to drop off which tested the skill of the driver and the balance of the crew!The time that we all spent together on the boat was really good fun. Six very different people all in close proximity! The toilets were great fun! They were typical nautical loos that had to be pumped out after use which proved both noisy and difficult for the ladies! The showers were difficult because of the small space but a good hot water system. The galley was excellent and we all had turns at meal preparation. We tasted some wonderful local food with several different cheeses being tried. The fresh fruit was very special, strawberries to die for! We bought crusty baguettes fresh from the bread shops and really enjoyed the local wines. Prior to the trip we had imagined that we would eat at restaurants most of the time but only on 3 occasions did that happen as we created some wonderful feasts on the boat.

The area that we travelled on the river Lot is very lovely French countryside with breathtaking scenery of villages perched on hillsides, castles and Chateau’s looking like Disney creations. The weather was perfect and because it was late in the season we saw very little other river traffic. Locks were both hard work and fun! Nobody fell in! but we got better as be learned the skills needed! Parts of the river are shallow with rocks but these areas are well marked on the maps provided. Someone sat alongside the driver each day to navigate pointing out the hazards and which buoy we had to go round! The river has a strong current which powers the hydro electric station at Luzech so the boat was a bit tricky to handle at times, each male had a go and we were all soon experts! Well, we got the boat back in one piece! It weighs 16 tons so we were shown pictures of one that used a bridge to stop and the damage was horrible! We just scratched ours a bit!I can honestly say that we all had a holiday of a lifetime and laughed a lot!

 As I have said we had several very lovely French villages to explore and one of them has been awarded the prettiest village which makes it very special. I had taken several photos and intended doing a seperate blog but this web site says it all and has some good photos We parked our boat and walked up the hill through narrow paved streets. Please visit the site and enjoy!

http://www.quercy-tourisme.com/st-cirq-lapopie/english/saint-cirq_english.html