Words & photos:
Hew Prendergast
Hew Prendergast
Inflatable kayaking down the Loire
Although a newcomer to paddling, Hew Prendergast took on the Loire and enjoyed a solo descent among beavers and bee-eaters in the heart of la Belle France.
It’s easy to be fooled about the extent of one’s adventures. I was alone on the Loire, watching the water level rise around what I now realised was an island. There had been solid rain for two days, and I was waiting in my tent for some respite. In the Bourgogne countryside, I’d seen no soul, neither farmer, fisherman, nor fellow paddler, and I felt a bit like a pioneer in the middle of nowhere.
Frédéric’s adventures
Suddenly, there was a cry. Looking out, I was amazed to see two divers, smiles on their faces just visible in their wetsuits. They were father and son, both firemen (sapeurs-pompiers in French, which sounds much better), and they were descending the length of the Loire for charity. I met them again later. Each day they’d swim for five or six hours, pushing all their gear on (self-explanatory) hydro-flotteurs before setting up camp or being entertained by local colleagues. Frédéric’s adventures put mine firmly in its place.
In 2005, he kayaked the length of the Loire in ten days and, in 2007, rowed the Atlantic solo. Among his concerns now, as a swimmer, were the voracious three-metre-long catfish that lurk in the Loire and, so he said, eat anything and everything.
My own experience on water had started only the previous autumn with runs up and down the small tidal rivers of Sussex. When summer came, a trip down the Loire seemed irresistible despite the considerable step up in scale. I planned to avoid the gorges and dams of its upper reaches (below Le Puy-en-Valay) and to start just north of Roanne from where my excellent guide-book (La Loire, Vue du Fleuve by Jean-François Souchard) promised “neither bridge nor rocky sill is going to hinder your progress” – in short, ideal for a beginner
So, in the middle of May, after a short but difficult passage down the river Sornin, a tributary, I emerged onto the Loire, here just a hundred metres wide. For my first few days, it was bordered by willow and poplar-dominated woodland or fields full of Charolais cattle. Swollen by earlier heavy rains, the river flowed at a good jogging pace but accelerated in the frequent shallow runs between islands. How exhilarating to move at such speed with so little effort!
My kayak was an inflatable Sevylor Yukon, not the fastest of craft, and even less so fully laden as it was with camping gear and enough food and water to last a week. It needed just a steady here and a check there, so there was ample opportunity to gaze at the scenery and to watch an amazing array of birdlife. Clouds of swifts would be swooping overhead, joined by sand martins and bee-eaters whose nest burrows dotted any sandy bank; always, there were raptors like black kites, ospreys and hobbies; on the water’s edge the heron family counted in grey and squacco herons, and great white and little egrets; and a maritime feel came with gulls, cormorants, and common and little terns. As I learned in my descent, the terns, along with the little ringed plover, are treated as symbols of the wild and untamed Loire. They nest on protected sandy islands, and paddlers are discouraged or prevented from landing.
This May, however, the birds had nowhere to go. With these islands underwater, the nesting season could not get underway. In the evening, a few hours after the firemen had passed, the rise of the river had me worried. I was either to spend an anxious night wondering if I’d be washed away or make a dash for a campsite in the town of Decize, some 32 kilometres away. High, steep banks and waist-deep nettles under the trees were scarcely conducive to finding a suitable pitch for my tent.
Beavers
The journey lasted three and a half hours. By now, the Loire had doubled its width. First, its horizon in front blurred into the sky, and then the banks faded away into the falling dark. Although there was little flood-borne flotsam, travel in these conditions was still risky. It did, however, bring an unexpected bonus. In the absolute silence bar that of the rain, it allowed me to hear the thwacking of beaver tails on the water as a warning of my approach. Having disappeared from the Loire at the beginning of the 20th century, beavers were successfully reintroduced in 1976, becoming another emblem of the river’s natural environment.
Decize is a waterway crossroads. On its southern edge is the Canal Latéral à la Loire, which runs parallel to and very close to the river; on its northern edge is the former bed of the river (with a canoe club based on its bank), which runs into the river Aron. Just where the Aron joins the present Loire is the start of the Canal du Nivernais, which heads eastwards to link the Loire basin with that of the Seine.
For anyone descending the Loire, the big problem with Decize is the dam at its downstream end. Souchard describes the situation succinctly, “un portage s’impose impérativement.” It was only thanks to three German kayakers with a car that I could get safe transport to an access point below the dam, less than a kilometre as the crow flies but about six by road. ‘Wild’ as the Loire is, one cannot escape man-made impediments altogether.
More came downstream at the nuclear stations of Belleville, Gien and Saint-Laurent-Nouan, each of whose dams required either portage or a run that caused me some excitement but would not bother anyone more seasoned. Slightly more problematic were passages under the beautiful, old bridges of towns such as Nevers, La Charité-sur-Loire and Blois, whose arches squeeze the river and where turbulence either forces a portage, depending on the height of the water or easing one’s way through by rope.
Junction of the Loire and Allier rivers
In between, the Loire continued to surprise and to charm. It is joined by the equally broad Allier about ten kilometres below Nevers. Almost as though the two rivers dislike each other, their waters immediately split into a mass of channels separated by heavily wooded and often flooded islands. Due to the range of habitats (many underwater when I passed through), the area became a reserve under the auspices of WWF in 2004. Camping on one of the larger islands, surrounded by beaver-gnawed tree stumps, I felt this was truly the Loire untamed, like, perhaps, some undeveloped tract of Eastern Europe. As a few mosquitoes emerged, nightingales, golden orioles and cuckoos sang their very different tunes against the din of a chorus of frogs.
Much of the next day, it led through more channels and islands where pristine nature seemed to rule. One of the delightful contrasts in the whole Loire paddling experience was the arrival that evening at the Pouilly home of one of the world’s most famous white wines, its eponymous Fumé. The vineyards themselves were on some of the first hillsides visible from the river, heralding a change from the low-lying woods and fields of before.
Sancerre came the next day, perched high on its chalky outcrop as if to make the point. The weather improved, bringing out thousands of iridescent banded demoiselles onto the river. Protruding above the surface from long, dark green fronds swaying below, the white flowers of water crowfoot formed spectacular carpets. On riverside trees were bunches of mistletoe in an abundance we simply don’t see in Britain.
As if to complement bountiful nature, the river began to acquire more and more villages on its banks, each with a church spire or tower, wreathes of ancient buildings, formal fronts to the river which had once been quays, and an overall impression of quiet prosperity and first-class maintenance. But were, for example, all the flower baskets just for the many touring cyclists I could see on the river banks? And were the settlements rubbish-free for the same reason? I rather think not. On the river, draining after all a fifth of the entire French landscape, it was astonishing that I came across scarcely a single piece of plastic flotsam or jetsam each day. Someone somewhere is doing something right.
Although I’d seen the odd fisherman motoring in a small boat, it was only on reaching Sully (-sur-Loire like many other settlements), when a class of paddlers appeared, that the river, here averaging about 250 metres wide, briefly took on its role as a place of leisure – one that expands enormously as summer advances.
The river, although noticeably lowering in level, was now carrying with it whole trees and large branches torn away by the flooding, demanding a watchful eye from me and providing perches for wagtails, terns and gulls. Instead of natural banks, stone dikes now lined the river and contained it – at least most of the time. The Loire flooded badly in 2003 and 2008 but not nearly as much as in 1846, 1856 and 1866, whose high water marks are recorded on numerous walls down the river. The word crue for flood is well worth learning since Vigicrues (short for Vigilance crues) is the keyword for seeking online river flood alerts across France.
On the afternoon approach to Orléans, the northernmost point of the Loire, I was paddling for the first time into the sun. From its source, the Loire had been heading generally northwards, but now it began the southwest course that would take it to the sea at St Nazaire. Since the cathedral was barely visible from the river, the most arresting architectural sight of Orléans was the gleaming arch of the new Pont d’Europe. With a warming sun, a strong current and a following breeze, the 25-kilometre passage down to Beaugency was a pleasant run of about three hours. This is a lovely town on the right bank of the river with its municipal campsite on the left. The intervening bridge displayed an information board about the colonies of black-headed and Mediterranean gulls that nested on the island just downstream – again evidence of a clear pride in the river’s wildlife and concern about looking after it.
As the valley became more settled, and grand houses and chateaux appeared on its slopes, it was noticeable that the wildlife had changed too: for example, far fewer raptors and bee-eaters than before. Occasionally, there stood a bare pole or dead tree with the huge nest of a white stork on top, and along the river’s edge were frequent copyu, a large South American rodent eradicated from Britain as a pest in the 1980s.
The last day, my eleventh on the water, took me 50 kilometres from Muides-sur-Loire to Amboise, most famous as the final home of Leonardo da Vinci. First, I saw the departure of the firemen whose tracks I’d crossed again. It was cloudy but warm, and there was little warning of what was to come. The passage under the old bridge in Blois was exciting; at Chaumont, there was a waterfront of old houses overlooked by an impressive castle; and at Chargé, a storm arrived with sudden ferocity. The river boiled with the mass of raindrops, lightning struck land to the right, and thunder seemed louder than ever out in the middle of the 300-metre-wide river. Drenched but exhilarated after two hours of this, I pulled out at the campsite in Amboise.
La fin
Like others, it was well organised, not very full (the crise économique was hitting tourism badly), and with all the essential facilities at the price of just a few euros. There was one thing shamefully wrong: fellow Brits (on bikes and in camper vans) turning up and, unlike any other nationality I came across, failing to make the slightest attempt at speaking the language of the country they’d come to see.
If you paddle the Loire, do learn at least some of the basics: not just bon jour and merci but also aquatic essentials like étanche (waterproof), en amont (upstream), en aval (downstream) and ligérien (adjective meaning ‘relating to the Loire’) and bon voyage! – ‘have a great trip’! My own of 400 kilometres had been just that.
