I managed to persuade Jacquie to let me publish her account of our Nivernais holiday on my blog. She wrote it with particular criteria in mind, thereby avoiding my usual rambling style.

On the Nivernais Canal, June 2008

There were four of us on this trip, all recently retired teachers, revelling in the prospect, for the first time in our adult lives, of a summer holiday in late June, at a time when our ex-colleagues and their charges would still be sweltering in under-ventilated classrooms. Our plan: two weeks on a canal in Burgundy. The solution: a boat called Sophie, rented from France Afloat, travelling the Canal du Nivernais from Vermenton to Châtillons-en-Bazois, and back.
Sophie, being both home and transport for two weeks, inevitably became a kind of fifth member of the party. She met all our essential requirements – affordable, a loo and shower per couple, and a large deck with parasol – but pretty she was not. A four-square barge, she had the elegance and manoeuvrability of a bathtub. By the end of the fortnight we were patting her big red rump affectionately, but for the first day or so she was a challenge. She was difficult to steer (and stop); the slightest breeze or a passing fish would send her heading apparently unstoppably for the nearest bank/bridge/lock/moored boat. But we learnt her ways fairly quickly, and soon we were negotiating locks and bridges with hardly a scratch. We were able to relax and enjoy. And there was so much to enjoy: profound country silence at a quiet evening mooring, broken only by the plop of a rising fish or a pulled cork; lingering glowing sunsets at the end of these longest summer days amid fields and woods at their most lush and full-blown; lock houses tended with eccentric and loving care in a riot of flowers, gnomes, dogs and art-work; the extraordinary sequence of sixteen locks, three tunnels and a deeply-wooded, shadowy, winding cut that leads to the top of the canal at the Étang de Baye. And, of course, food. We did most of our own cooking on board, partly for the fun of it and partly for economy, but also because restaurants are relatively rare on this stretch of the canal. Those we did find were usually very small, simple, and often very good. Having reached the lake at Baye on a blazing afternoon, we went in search of rewarding refreshment. A twenty minute walk to La Coloncelle took us to a tiny bar/shop/restaurant called le Martin Pecheur, whose owner was happy to come and collect us for an evening meal. The crudité, steak and frites were excellent. Even smaller – with only four tables, and a disconcerting line in anti-immigrant cartoons on the walls, but with a surprisingly varied menu, was the Bar Sur Soleuse, at the Chavance locks, accessible only from the tow-path. And the very friendly owner of Le Snack at Chitry-les-Mines threw in a free bottle of wine.
The Nivernais canal is one of the smaller, perhaps less well-known of the French canals; quiet, beautiful and well-maintained, it must be one of the most delightful. And the four of us are still good friends.
(Copyright 2008, Jacquie Penrose)

Jacquie has also written a couple of ghost stories for the Havant Ghost Walk (see havant literary festival website). I am commissioning other writers as well. If you're reading this blog with a ghost story already written or the potential to write one let me know before september 10th as I have a deadline to meet. I will worry about how to make it fit but just need good stories.)