The novel that I’m writing at the moment is set on the French canals, which provides me with an excellent excuse to bob across the Channel now and again to do some research. We’ve just returned from a trip which started in Namur in Belgium and took us through the utterly beautiful but overlooked Ardennes all the way to Champagne.
Travelling by water reduces me to the same kind of contemplative state that I arrive at when I’m writing, at a point where a sense of peacefulness and an intense awareness of beauty intersect. The quietest spot on our boot is up at the front where you can’t hear the engine, where you can sit so that you glide a few feet above the river, overwhelmed with its greenness and the lushness of the banks. Visually ravishing (even the industrial zones we’ve passed through have a spiky, raw intensity) it’s an experience that feeds all the senses: the vivid colours and the astonishing light make me hungry for music and poetry and good food and each day ends in sated lassitude.
Napoleon decreed that three metres either side of the waterways should be common land, which means that it is possible to tie up without trespassing in lonely, lovely places.
It’s a profound way to travel: we don’t cover much ground, which gives us the chance to immerse ourselves in local history (this trip yielded up Rimbaud and Verlaine, Joan of Arc and Charlemagne, who pops up just about everywhere), vernacular architecture (the cathedrals and the tiny village churches are to die for) and regional cuisine – this is France, after all.
Our watery world is populated with herons and otters and swans and baby coots and the people we meet along the way are no less varied and intriguing. At times it feels like there is almost too much inspiration; that’s when we know it’s time to pack up and come home, to download all the ideas and emotions and free up our hard drive for the next time.
« Previous Entries