Boating Revelations

Sailing from the Camargue to the Canal du Midi gave Ray Kershaw and friends new insights into the land of pink flamingos, white horses and a black pearl.

- Ray Kershaw

It’s our first night on the water. The evening is so perfect, we think they must have tailor-made it especially for us. Moored by rush-fringed vineyards, our floating home-from-home looks like a boating-brochure picture. Swollen-headed with success, its landlubber crew feels buoyant too. We managed to stop it, leap boldly ashore, hammer in stakes and vanquish a bunch of obstreperous ropes. Who was worried anyway? Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of... No! Better still! Crack open the champagne! 

We are two couples of old friends – grey nomads in Aussie; roaming wrinklies in proper English – who have had half the world between us for several decades. Now we are all in the same boat. A good wheeze to rekindle old esprit de corps or a Titanic-sized disaster looming downstream? The plan had assumed the romance of an odyssey. The Canal du Rhône à Sète and the Canal du Midi: a silvery high road hemming Roman Provence’s luminous rim; ever changing horizons, unspoiled nature and wildlife, vineyards and history: no other satnav but the call of the south.

We had embarked from Saint-Gilles, buying enough at its gigantic market to feed a navy for a week. As well as pâtés and hams, and a sizable selection of France’s 700 varieties of cheese, Mont Ventoux black truffles completed our haul. Gourmet shipboard dining is not only a bargain, but which restaurant could beat our sundeck table in the velvet dusk? Tonight, the cabaret is an aerial ballet of bats. We pour more champagne. Tomorrow’s the day! For Aussies Per and Dianne, Provence is a blank canvas; Alice and I have never seen it from a boat. All we need to do now is to learn to steer straight.