Cross-Country Rowing: France
Preparing to row 848 miles on the inland waterways from North to South France — the Channel to the Mediterranean — in Tramp, a mahogany skerry rowing boat.
Last year, successfully rowing across Scotland and returning home safely helped one lucky lad graduate from an intern boyfriend probationary period to full-time co-adventurer. On the last day of our Scottish adventure he reassured me that this was the first of other, bigger adventures. Right he was; now we are planning to row across our second country — France.
Goal: two Tramps and a lady row across France, stopping at all pâtisseries along the way without getting robbed. All return safely.
Stage zero: Plan from the end and get to the start for a good cause
Great planning and decision-making lowers death rates and makes a dull screenplay. Rowing across the Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, is a weather-dependent technical challenge, requiring a costly certified escort. Though we could become certified ourselves, rather than risk failing to get to the start line, we’ll take Tramp the boat on top of the car on the ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe, and leave the Channel crossing for another time.
- Expect failures. Back up your plan and back up your back up plan.
- Design plans without attachment to the outcome
Plan A: A friend comes with us in the car to the starting point. They drive the car South and park so it’s waiting for us on arrival.
Plan B: Find a place to stow Tramp near our launching point. We drive South and park the car, then return to the starting point using public transport.
Plan C: Row across Sweden.
Like many adventurers, we wanted to pretend that we were taking on the challenge for a cause higher than our own. French pastry chefs are facing multiple threats to their traditions; the rise of veganism has been challenging their butter-based belief systems while the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many local bakeries to close down. All this together with sugar-addictions being likened to cocaine, we believe it’s crucial that through our rowing, we raise awareness of the good work being done by speciality pastry chefs from the north to the south of France. Cakes play a vital role in mental well-being.
Let us eat cake.
And row.
If you’d like to show your support, consider participating in our reverse crowd-funding campaign; instead of donating money to support our cause, use your money for causes important to you.
Let us know who you’re giving to and we’ll eat a pastry on your behalf.
More people have got to Mount Everest’s summit than have returned — a safe return is likely the most boring and important part of planning. We brainstormed 21 future courses for Tramp once reaching the Mediterranean. This exercise avoids pre-editing to encourage creative thinking. We graded each of the options for a) simplicity, b) cost, c) excitement, and d) getting back home. The five top-scoring options are highlighted in bold.
21 Future Courses for Tramp after Reaching the Mediterranean
1. Load onto locally parked Volvo, drive to Bilbao, ferry return to the UK
2. Row to the Red Sea and somehow to the Indian ocean
3. Find rowers to row her back
4. Post her home
5. Sell her
6. Giveaway / donate
7. Row to the Gibraltar Straits and back up (around Spain, Portugal?)
8. Put on wheels and walk or cycle her back
9. Make a new home in a Mediterranean garage
10. Deconstruction for later reconstruction
11. Buy a car to take her home with
12. Take her back on a train
13. Moor her
14. Go to a wooden boat show geek out
15. Tramp is our luggage as we board a ferry as foot-passengers
16. Hitchhike
17. Charter her out/loan her out to a campsite
18. Make her into a bonfire
19. Viking burial / floating fire (remove rollocks, take screwdriver)
20. Make her into a flowerpot
21. Set her adrift and let god decide
From this, we realised that having a trolley for Tramp will diversify our options when water-passage is challenging.
Stage 1: Le Havre to Paris on La Seine, 350 km (217.5 miles) 22 locks
The sea port of Le Havre dates back to the 16th century and serves as our entry point to the river Seine. The Canal de Tancarville is reserved for commercial traffic so we’ll follow the estuary around to Honfleur, or perhaps just make that our starting point. Since the Seine is doing its best to flow into the sea and we’re rowing in-land, we’ll use incoming tides to transport us towards Paris. Rouen, capital city of Normandy, will likely be our first major city stop. 105km from Le Havre, this first leg alone is longer than our Scotland cross-country row, with a Rouen roulette pastry as our reward. A further 233km row away is Paris, where 1m draft Tramp will take us through the lesser-traveled St. Denis and St. Martin inner canals of Paris. We’ll battle against the Paris pleasure boats for our place to moor at the Place de la Bastille aiming for free parking in central Paris. We’ll envision Tramp not being robbed while we search for the finest pâtisseries the capital has to offer.
Stage 2: Paris to Migennes on La Seine and L’Yonne, 178km (110.6 miles) 25 locks
Leaving Paris on La Haute Seine from the Paris Arsenal marina, we’ll go through the Port à l’Anglais rowing on a quest for Brie de Melun, one of only two bries in the world protected with a Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, banned in the US for being too good. Montereau-Fault-Yonne “where the Yonne falls into the Seine” has a history of interesting names. If John the Fearless hadn’t been quite so, perhaps he would have avoided being murdered on the bridge in 1419. Not to be outdone, his son, Philip the Good seized the town, seemingly for the good cause of himself. At the pâtisseries we will be hunting gougères, a kind of savoury profiterole with comté in choux pastry. These will fuel us on to Misy, Courlon, the cathedral city of Sens, Villeneuve (was new in 1163), Armeau, Joigny, and onto the junction with the Canal de Bourgogne at Migennes.
Stage 3: Migennes to Dijon to St Jean de Losne on Canal de Bourgogne, 242km (150 miles) 190 locks
This stage will be a series of living lessons in thinking big and patience. The idea of connecting the Atlantic and the Mediterranean through Bourgogne might have seeded as early as Louis XII in the 15th century. In 1606, Henry IV started making the idea into reality with a canal between Dijon and Saint Jean de Losne. 90 years later, Vauban recommended to link the Yonne and Saône rivers and another century after that, boats entered the port of Dijon. 400 years after the idea was set in motion, we’ll be enjoying this engineering feat passing through a 3.3km tunnel under the hillside at 400m above sea level. For safety, we’ll have our navigation light and (French?) horn at the ready. About two thirds of our cross-France journey’s locks are within the Canal de Bourgogne, often with less than a kilometre between them. To celebrate passing through most of these, we’ll be dining on Dijon’s finest nonnettes, individual jam-filled gingerbread cakes.
Stage 4: St Jean de Losne to Macon to Lyon on La Saône, 215km (133.6 miles), 5 locks
“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” is commonly translated to “Let them eat cake”, most likely because English speakers at the time didn’t know whether brioche was a cake or bread or something between both and neither. This stage will provide ample opportunities to taste-test some classic Burgundy treats from bakeries around the waterways. Rigodon uses stale brioche, a French version of what the English call ‘bread and butter pudding’ — who knows who copied who? We hope to find a decent gâteau de ménage, though it might be hard to come by depending on the season. Plenty of pain d’épices will power our rowing through Seurre, Gergy, Chalon sur Saône, Tournus and onto the third-largest city of France — Lyon.
Stage 5: Lyon to Valence to Avignon to Sète on La Rhône, 380km (236 miles), 13 locks
Finally we will be on the river Rhône, our passage to the Mediterranean sea. What better way to gear up for the final leg than a Lyonnaise tarte aux pralines. We are likely to have to hitchhike our way along much of the Rhône, as boats with human engines are not allowed through many of the locks. Somehow or other we’ll progress, perhaps sweetening the deal for someone to tow us along with brioches aux pralines roses. In Valence, we can try out Suisse de Valence, a man-in-uniform-shaped cookie with hat, moustache, raisins as buttons and coffee bean eyes. As we move into the Provence region, we’ll be on the lookout for citrus-flavoured doughnut-like oreillettes. While the terrestrial folk take photos sur le pont d’Avignon, we will be feasting sous le pont on Les Papalines d’Avignon,
listed as a national heritage item in the French chocolate specialities list, hides a sweet heart of oregano under its pink thistle-like robe. It is a blend of about sixty plants, some of which are picked in the foothills of Mont Ventoux after distillation or maceration and the addition of honey. The origin of this sweetness dates back to 1835 and it is the master pastry chefs of Vaucluse who gave it its letters of nobility in 1960. The recipe is always the same. As for the oregano liqueur, it can be bought directly from the producer.
Sous le pont d’Avignon, on y mange, on y mange… Only a selected few patissiers are licensed to sell les Papalines so if you want us to smuggle or post you some, put your orders in now. No trip to Provence is complete without lavender, and a melon tarte tatin with lavender honey should tick the box and help us on our final push on the Canal du Rhône to Sète, where probably we’ll eat a baguette.
This article represents initial research into the routes and pastries of our France cross-country inland waterways adventure. We happily welcome pastry or cross-country rowing advice and recommendations.
