Barging: Enjoy the River

One of the fastest growing segments of cruising is canal and river barging by Hotel-Barges: traditional commercial barges once used for transport of goods that have been refurbished into beautiful and comfortable “floating country inns”. Many Western European countries, France in particular, are laced with a network of canals that once served to connect the country’s main waterways and aid in the transportation of goods.Today these canals serve mostly recreational purposes a...

Southwest to northeast through Scotland’s Great Glen, my husband and I barged the Highlands in the summer days of early July. Yes, we could have driven the 62 miles or 100 kilometers in a leisurely morning, or perhaps even walked the route from the Atlantic coast to the North Sea in the same seven days and six nights of our barging trip. However, not for either of those options would we have traded our elegant, educational barge cruise through the 29 locks of the 200-year-old Caledonian Ca...

Your friends have just returned from vacationing in Europe and cannot stop talking about their Barge/Bike tour, claiming it was the best vacation that they have ever had! You find yourself picturing a rusted old tug boat chugging along some oily waterway and cannot imagine that this would be something that anyone could enjoy! You try to imagine how a bike would fit in to the whole scenario and you simply cannot. Perplexed, you ask, what in the world is a barge/bike tour and why are people so ...

The only sound as the narrowboat slides through the canal is the faint lapping of water against its bow. Occasionally ducks and swans halfheartedly complain, their feathers ruffled by the small wake sweeping along the stone banks. Even at the bow of the boat, the source of propulsion some 60 feet to the rear cannot be heard. With a speed limit of just 4 mph, a trip aboard one of Britain’s thousands of canal boats offers plenty of time for a good look at the countryside and fascinating urb...