Canoe canoe?

Finally, an outing like I love ‘em! On Thursday, Dan and Pascal invited me to join them for a barbecue and canoeing on the Huisne, the river that runs through Nogent-le-Rotrou.

We started out at their place for lunch, with Pascal’s mother and niece, Kim.

After a barbecue lunch (hamburgers and fries, the way life should be!) we went into Nogent and found the Nogent canoe and kayak club. The Huisne is the river that flows through Nogent, and I was looking forward to seeing things from a water rat’s point of view! (We did see a water rat, by the way…)

When we finally found the club, we were given life jackets to wear (obligatory, even though the Huisne is at most about four feet deep, from what we could see…) We’d been given instructions to wear closed shoes, and so I wore my Converse sneakers. But when I got there I realized I was an idiot; I have some perfectly wonderful water sandals and some Tevas, and they would have been more appropriate. But the canoe and kayak club adheres strictly to French legislation, and they’re most likely used to vacationers who don’t know much about the water or boats.

As soon as we had on our life vests and we had been given strings to attach our sunglasses to our heads, we set off for the place north of town where we’d be dropped off.

There was a man fishing by the shore, and he waited, slightly amused, while we got the canoes into the water.

And we were finally off. Yes, I was there too – with Dan. But of course, she who takes the pics is rarely depicted herself! (There’s a photo of me in the gallery below.)

The canoe trip lasted for about an hour and a half – or perhaps a bit longer, as we weren’t in much of a hurry. We were going with the sleepy current, and it was a lot more fun to just “go with the flow” than to paddle like maniacs. We did have to use a little muscle from time to time, as there were a few really shallow places where we went temporarily aground, and a few places where the current suddenly woke up and tried to take us into the bank.

Most of the time we could have been anywhere at all. The gentle bends and common foliage reminded me very much of the Deerfield river in Massachusetts, and of places I’d been swimming in Vermont. As I’d never done this sort of thing in France before (as I’ve mentioned before, this is the first time in almost 30 years that I’ve spent the summer in France) the afternoon was like a mini-vacation.

I’ll let you discover the afternoon through the gallery on this page (click to go there!)

One last thing: I spoke to the man in charge of the club, and apparently they canoe and kayak all year. As I have a 3 mm wetsuit (if Jane’s old wetsuit actually fits me…) I’m actually thinking of joining the club. And… he told me that the scuba club has its last session for the summer tomorrow morning – so I’m going to go by the pool to inquire about becoming an “initiatrice” – or someone who is legally and technically qualified to give scuba lessons to beginners.

Yay! Finally some fun on the horizon!

XOXOXOX