Tag Archives: Allier river

Book review: Bradt Paddling France

In a line
Mouthwatering selection of river- lake- and inshore paddles right across France, but packboats go unmentioned, despite lauding the use of public transport.

What they say
This award-winning new Bradt guidebook provides 40 itineraries for water-based exploration around France by SUP kayak & canoe to suit all abilities. It is the first practical guidebook to explore the whole country by SUP (stand-up paddleboard), canoe and kayak – waterborne activities enjoying a popularity boom.
Experienced paddleboarder, travel writer and local resident Anna Richards has toured the country’s rivers, lakes and coasts to handpick 40 outstanding itineraries for water-based exploration that suit all abilities from novice to expert, enabling readers to experience Metropolitan France as never before!
Rrp £19.99. 41 maps, 230pp

Review copy supplied by Bradt Guides. Book images found on online previews.
Additional contextual review info by French boarder, Gael A.

• Varied selection of paddles right across the six corners of l’hexigone and Corsica
• Nicely written descriptions
• Maps are small but routes are short so they do the job
• W3W works well for pinpointing locations
• Nice layout and paper
• Printed in the UK – better sustainability

• Routes appear to be composed almost entirely from set rental/guided itineraries
• Most are short return paddles
• When it comes to paddling knowledge, the author seems a little out of her depth
• Nearly all photos are stock library shots
• IKs and packrafts virtually unmentioned, yet as transportable as a rolled up iSUP

Review
Thanks to its topography, rich history, culture and proximity to the UK, on river, lake or sea, France is a fantastic paddling destination. Paddling France: 40 Best Places to Explore by SUP, Kayak & Canoe replicates Bradt’s Paddling Britain by Lizzie Carr which, in its first 2018 edition, was a long-running hit, possibly supercharged by lockdowns when demand for inflatables boiled over.
Like many others at this time, author Anna Richards discovered the wonder of paddleboarding, moved to France to become a travel writer and, knowing the country from childhood holidays, zig zagged around for over a year to write and research it all.
Paddling France isn’t aimed at enthusiasts attracted to the challenge of developing skills by juggling tidal streams and winds, river flow rates or the logistics of multi-day tours. Most SUP owners are into casual paddles, but probably outnumber the former by ten to one.
But unlike Lizzie Carr’s original Paddling Britain (which I checked after writing this), faced with an equally monumental task, in most cases Anna Richards seems to have either rented kayaks (and maybe boards), used their shuttle services, or at sea sometimes joined tours. Although all are great paddles, I didn’t get the impression any routes were original selections born from years of experience, the usual prerequisite for authoring a guide like this.
Initially I understood ‘… generally with the assistance of local clubs that kindly loaned me rigid… kayaks‘ (page xix) as a euphemism for arranging rental freebies in return for a listing in the book. But it’s possible the author actually believes ‘clubs’ – in the social/membership/lessons UK sense – is the right word to describe a commercial rental, tour and sometimes training service. Only Route 21 lists a ‘Club Nautique‘ sailing school which also rents kayaks and boards. All the rest call themselves versions of watersports centres or ‘location canoë-kayak‘ (kayak rentals) of which there are many more in France than in the UK.
Once you get your head around this you ask yourself: well, it’s a short-cut but in France does it actually matter? What are most Brit paddle tourists’ experiences in France? Is it flying or railing down with a packboat, as I’ve done? Or is it driving around with kids or campervan, then chancing upon a lovely waterside spot which offers day rentals and a lift back? It’s almost certainly the latter. That’s what I’ve done elsewhere in the world.
It’s clear the author put in the miles, paddled every route and composed a detailed description and practical info, although images of her in ‘off message’ kayaks are absent, replaced by stock library photos with fill 90% of this book. With mainstream guidebook sales in retreat and corners getting cut, these are all understandable measures to still produce a nicely designed and illustrated book in full colour for just £20 that’s printed in the UK, not the other side of the world. That alone deserves a sustainability rosette which the publisher should laud.
I wouldn’t consider blagging a freebie rental in return for a mention as unethical, as long as it’s clearly flagged. Many routes start and end right outside an outfitter’s base. I could be wrong, but if that’s the case better to be upfront. Skimming through Paddling Britain, that book appears to have been written and researched the old fashioned way – though again, no mention of packboats ;-(

Ironically, Anna Richards likes iSUPs for some of the same reasons we all rate IKs and Packrafts: ease of use and transportability. Yet as said, many routes seem to be in rental hardshells, while IKs get dismissed in the Intro’s second para (left) as too awkward to travel with compared to a SUP.
I looked up what a 12.5′ inflatable paddle board weighs: about the same as a Gumotex Twist 1, and 2-3 times more than a packraft, though I admit a 4-metre FDS IK (above right) is ridiculously bulky. What a shame then she missed out on made-in-France Mekongs packrafts rental service. Some rental outfitters listed even supply Mekongs. On a lively river I’m sure she’d have been thrilled. So, no IK or Ps in this book (bar p5 photo), but of course, conditions permitting, all routes are suited to packboating.

Evening splash hour on the Ardeche (Route 27). SoT and IK heaven

The author seems more enterprising travel writer with a SUP hobby, than experienced river runner. She has a talent for filling out evocative descriptions with not much to go on. For an inspirational as much as practical title like this, that may be a better balance, but it’s a shame we can’t have both. If you’ve used serious paddle guides, Paddling France falls a little short in places.
What I now realise are linguistic mistranslations of French paddling terms jar, suggesting the author was inexperienced in writing an English paddle sports guide that must include accepted terminology and elements of technique, appropriate gear, water hazards and safety regs. Page 16 and 18 excepted, the frequent use of disembark to ‘get off’ [your board/the river] or even ‘set off’ [for the paddle – p66] get particularly grating. This is a literal translation of a similar French word which doesn’t always work in English. Marinas get described as ‘ports’ or ‘harbours’ or even ‘pleasure boat ports’ – also not the same thing. Nor is a weir a dam in English (though in the US they call them ‘low-head dams’). It took me days to realise this. I now wonder if paddling newb Anna Richards learned her paddling and nautical terminology in French while researching this book, then translated some words literally into English. Hence the odd use of port de plaisance – the clumsy French phrase for marinas. Or assuming barrage translates to dam, weir (or roadblock), when all three are quite different things. As and aside, a few times a SUP board is called a ‘paddle’: ‘inflate your paddle’ roll up your ‘paddle’. Maybe ‘paddle’ is slang for a SUP in French? Probably not*
But then an often-repeated claim dawned on me: English vocabulary is many, many times greater than French or any other language – no wonder L’Académie Française is so defensive ;-) You won’t drown horribly as a result of all this, but if writing a paddle guide in English for English readers, use or learn the right words – or check with someone who does.

Actually it is! Gael writes: Some years ago the term “paddle” has been inexplicably adopted as the official French word for SUP. Stand Up Paddleboard would translate into something like “planche propulsée en position debout au moyen d’une pagaie”, or PPPDMP which would be difficult to pronounce. Italians called it “tavola da SUP”, which is shorter but nearly as ludicrous.

‘Paddle This Way’
Working through the book, up front after a handy country map which you’ll be referring to a lot, we get 26 (or xxvi) pages of what and how. Flying is discouraged for environmental but also supposedly impractical reasons even if, despite what’s claimed, a packboat or iSUP is easily loaded on a plane. There’s good info on the various car regulations including urban emission restrictions which could catch a foreigner out.
On a Eurostar there’s no weight limit, so if you can get two bags like left (IK with camping gear on a folding trolley) you’ll not pay excess fees, despite what’s said. With a packraft there’s nothing to it.
There follows a section about paddleboarding with the ‘accessibility and flexibility’ words I see mentioned so often, but which have long applied to packboats too, and especially packrafts (sorry; we’ve had this argument!). How to SUP, choosing a SUP and washing SUP; it’s all summarised. Kayaks and canoes get slightly less detailed treatment from expert contributors lifted from the Britain book who list elementary turning strokes a child would guess. Better to suggest a technique I found less intuitive: pushing on the upper arm, not yanking on the lower, as so many kayak newbs do.
A box on renting boats and boards (also listed locally after each Route) recommends French outdoor retailer Decathlon’s IK rental service (and which might have included Decathlon’s packraft range, cough, cough). But I couldn’t find any rental boats on decathlon.fr and think that side of the service has been dropped.

Talking about gear, much of it makes sense, but it’s odd to see a manual SUP pump listed as ‘the biggest regret of the project‘, with the advice to get a 12-volt car inflator. So much for using public transport then! You can have both of course – long/thin SUP pumps are bulky compared to pocket packraft inflators, but the autonomy they offer changes the game by being able to ditch cars.
A ‘Wear a Buoyancy Aid’ heading on page xx unfortunately appears right below a stock shot of half a dozen SUPists clad only in skimpy swimwear (and again two pages earlier). I read here 62% of UK ‘boarders don’t regard a PFD is an essential safety item. I rarely see them worn, but then I rarely see SUP boarders actually standing. I suppose as long as you’re leashed to your board (skimpies are unleashed), in deep but calm water you can crawl back on, providing you clung to you paddle. But on some of the listed rivers I know a leash can also be an entrapment hazard. Not mentioned. This is where handbooks or guidebooks written by paddling pros like Bill Mattos, Peter Knowles, Mark Rainsley, Laurent Nicholas, Luc Mehl and even Bradt’s own Lizzie Carr have the edge. I’ve learned a whole lot from nearly all of them.

To her credit, every photo of Anna Richards on a board is in full wetsuit with pfd. What a shame there was no shot of her on Route 31 in Lyon, her home town, just more stock imagery. River rowers never wear BAs either, but it does seem to be a blind spot with SUP users. As said, most of the book’s images come from photo libraries, and of the SUPs pictured, half have no BA, compared to only 1 in 10 kayakers.
With off-season paddling often covered, you’d think then here’d a good place to mention the perils of cold water shock (scroll down to ‘C’) to drive the PFD message home: you drown flailing in a breathless panic long before succumbing to hypothermia. On Lake Annecy (Route 33) winter water temps are a ‘distinctly refreshing 4°C‘.
There’s also no mention of the real menace of weirs (barrage in French; ‘low-head dams’ in the US) which led to that Welsh SUP tragedy and was also drummed into my paddle reading early on.
There follows some boilerplate stuff on responsible paddling. Good to learn wild camping in France is a bit less illegal than I’d thought; it just emphasises how satisfying multi-day routes are (as in the Britain book). And I never knew canal paddling wasn’t allowed either*, nor the Seine in Paris. No wonder the French are so militant!

* Gael A adds: Canal paddling is allowed in many places. Inland waterways can be rivers or canals. Those capable of commercial shipping are managed by the public company Voies Navigables de France VNF. VNF decides which type of craft is authorized on each waterway or portion of waterway. For instance the Seine through Paris intra-muros is not allowed to sailing dinghies, skiffs, canoes, SUPs etc., while it is allowed downstream near Boulogne-Billancourt or Maisons-Laffittes and upstream near Saint-Fargeau for instance. VNF manages wide and deep waterways open to large barges. Older narrow gauge canals still in operation like Canal du Midi, Canal de Bourgogne or Canal de Nantes à Brest are no longer used for shipping and from now on dedicated to recreational navigation, which includes recreational barges, river yachts, canoes, SUPs, etc. For instance, when I couldn’t paddle on the river Marne because it was in spate, I went to Canal de l’Ourcq, although canal paddling is boring actually.

Division 240 sea regs
With sea paddling routes included, I’d have expected a reference or at least a link to France’s Division 240 regs and how they might apply to SUPs. Another thing that could catch foreigners out, just as with driving. IK&P’s French SUP correspondent Gael A explains the regs as follows:

Division 240 applies to SUPs more than 3.50m [11.5′] long.
SUPs shorter than 3.50m fall into the beach toy category, consequently they can’t go beyond 300 m from a sheltered shore.
SUPs longer than 3.50m can go beyond the 300m limit up to 2 nautical miles [3.7km], by daytime only, provided they comply with watertightness, stability and buoyancy requirements described in Division 245.
To make a long story short, a SUP must have 2 chambers. A SUP with only one chamber is considered a beach toy even if longer than 3.50m. Obviously watertightness and stability requirements don’t apply to SUPs.
Navigation in the 300m-2nm zone requires the following safety gear:
• leash
• PFD 50N or wetsuit or drysuit
• waterproof signal light like a strobe or a headlamp, or even a cyalume stick provided it is attached to the PFD.

So my single-chamber, 2.8-m TXL packraft would sadly be demoted to the beach toy it resembles and be restricted to less than 300m from a shore. But just as with having a high viz vest, warning triangle and breathalysers in your car (all detailed on pager xi), you do wonder how- or if all this is enforced but it’s a guidebook’s job to inform readers.
Winds will always be unpredictable but there’s very little tidal information on the salt water routes, and whether it might be a factor. The much loved MagicSeaweed app listed on page xx went offline mid 2023, 10 months before the book was published, and its replacement seems surf based. (There are similar online resources.) Down on the Med tides aren’t a thing, but Brittany has some of the world’s highest tidal ranges, reaching 15 metres on some routes. Not everyone may fully appreciate how if could affect some paddles.

Rental SoT shoots a chute on the Tarn (Route 23)

Odd that there’s no mention or imagery of thrilling glissades or passe canoës (canoe chutes, left), a French speciality rarely seen in the UK.
Built especially for paddlers (and sometimes fish) to avoid tedious portaging around weirs – neither glissades are listed in the Paddling Vocabulary on p222. They’re an added highlight to many rivers I’ve paddled there and you’d think it might be fun to try sat on a SUP too.

Location and nav
Like other guidebooks, the Bradt uses the What3Words GPS location app to precisely pin down riverside put-ins as well as passing POIs on third party mapping. I got into using the W3W website (not the app) to orientate myself with the book’s routes and ///graphics.dads.inched is much easier to momentarily memorise then type correctly than 48.85840, 2.29447, although the Rivières Nature en France guide uses QR codes which go straight to map; no typing needed. Only once on Route 27 did the W3W launch point end up near Tomtor in far eastern Siberia – the coldest settlement on earth. All the others were spot on. The W3W app also provides the conventional numerical waypoint equivalent (as above) which a GPS device needs, and which will work on all other mapping apps, not just W3W. Both (and QRs) are so much better than the OS grid ref system used in the first edition of Britain and Pesda guides.

Talking of maps, I’d have expected a tip towards the IGN Rando app, (left) the French equivalent of the UK’s excellent Ordnance Survey equivalent. Widely used Open Source Maps (OSM, on which the book’s mini maps are based) can be free, but in my experience you can’t beat centuries of refined cartographic know-how.
And with mapping apps like IGN (or indeed Google) you can download an area of map for offline use when there’s no 4G – quite likely if backcountry France is anything like the UK. All phones have GPS so W3W will still work, or at least show points. On long river days in France I’ve often lost track of where the heck I was and how far salvation might be. A handheld GPS device (eg: Garmin) or a mobile app running offline maps is the answer to nav connectivity.

The Routes
About three-quarters of the 40 routes (full list right) are there-and-back or loop paddles in the 5-12km range and can be just a couple of hours on the water. On a lake a loop makes sense, but where possible, I’d rather paddle a river or a coast one-way and bus or even walk back. The outdoorsy author has done big hikes herself; it’s a shame she missed out on ways to combine both for those with portable inflatables like hers but there and back day trips are what most people do.
About 15 routes are inshore sea paddles divided equally between Atlantic and Mediterranean. Another 15 are rivers (9 are one-way), and 7 are lakes, with a bit of overlap all round (estuaries, reservoirs, canals, weir-ed urban rivers, and so on). As you can see in the Contents, each route gets a descriptive heading which is a nice touch.

Each route also gets difficulty ratings from 1-5 for SUPs, and another for kayak/canoes. As you’d expect, most are easier or safer in a kayak, but all will be dependant on experience, river levels or coastal winds. The few one-ways are all great rivers in the Massif, like the Tarn (only 10km), Allier (11.5km) and the famous Ardeche – at a full 32km by far the book’s longest. The shortest is less than 2km, or 3km through the Il de Ré’s salt marshes (Route 16) – the sort of paddling probably better appreciated standing on a board.

Essentials for Route 33: Lake Annecy in the Rhône-Alpes

Routes I know
Like any know-all reader I ‘tested’ the four routes I’ve paddled through at least once to see how they compared with my recollections. I read a few other interesting ones too, then skimmed the rest.

€20 riverside lunch at Milandes – Dordogne (Route 20). Sure beats a Greggs on the Thames.

Route 20 on the Dordogne is a swift one-wayer of 11km passing several chateaux and ending with an easy bus trip back to the start. That’s what we want. I like the way some historical context is added into the narrative; like in the UK, it can be centuries deep in France. As it is you’ll be less than two hours on the water so best to string it out exploring some of the riverside villages.
The Dordogne was my very first French paddle in 2005: a full 101-km of meanders and piffling riffles between Bretenoux and Tremolat. By the end I found it all a bit easy, but still fondly recall a deliciously expensive lunch at Milandes (left), then randomly crawling off the river exhausted that evening, dumping the Gumotex in some undergrowth and squelching onto the grounds of what I now see was the luxury Manoir de Bellerive hotel. I was too tired to talk myself out of it.

We’ve done the full 86-km of the Tarn (Route 23) from Florac to Millau at least 2.3 times using trains, planes, buses, taxis, IKs and packrafts, and the 11-km of this route took us just 90 dawdling minutes. As the book suggests, your eyes will be out on stalks, but it’s a shame to come all this way for half a morning in the amazing Tarn Gorge.

We also put in at La Malene one time, but following the easy 10-minute portage around Pas the Soucy (left; we clocked 9km), we did another 12km via Les Vignes to Le Rozier, capping a satisfying and spectacular day on the Tarn.
The book advises to ‘disembark’ before Pas de Soucy a ‘gnarly waterfall… which shouldn’t be attempted … unless you’re seriously professional‘. Shooting waterfalls can be a survivable stunt, but Soucy is a far more deadly rockfall with several syphons – another white water paddlers’ nightmare. It’s an odd mistake to make as photos show the author on her SUP so she was right there.

On one of my favourites, the Allier (Route 27; 11km), you wonder why the hard to reach put-in at le Pradel, when Prades hamlet with shops, toilets, parking and a popular put-in beach is just a mile up the road? Perhaps partly because the rental outfit dropped the author here?
Many of the book’s one-way river paddles seem predicated on the put-ins and itineraries of local kayak tour/rental operators (who each get a usually sole mention), rather than what would suit independent paddlers in their own boats and other means of getting around. With or without vehicles (or unwilling to use taxis), such paddlers could do a lot worse on the Allier than Langeac to Brioude, 38km. The two towns are just four stops (30 mins) apart on the Cevenol train line which followed all the way up the Allier gorges is a day out in itself.

Route 29 is the Ardeche, the longest in the book by far at 32km, of which the author says: ‘If you do one route in this book, make it [the Ardeche]’. This proves Anna Richards gets the appeal of doing a full day, one-way paddle, instead of two-hour there-and-backs which can be done back home on any summer’s evening. ‘It will leave you speechless…’ she continues. There’s certainly nothing like it (or the nearby Tarn) in the UK which is why in high summer you might get crushed in a white-water logjam of upturned rentals.

For a long time I was put off the Ardeche, misinterpreting Rivers Publishing’s description, and for Paddling France the author recommends using an SoT over her paddleboard. A lot of the time long, damage-prone fins are given as the reason not to ‘board similar rivers, but surely shorter or bendy fins are available? I’d assume the bigger risk is losing balance and whacking your head or breaking your collarbone in shallow rapids. Or the fact that when sat down for safety, your average SUP steers like a sea kayak with half a paddle.
In a bombproof packraft the Ardeche was plain good fun, made all the more memorable by the hoards of flailing revellers I’d normally seek to avoid. We came down over a week from Les Vans via the Chassezac tributary, covering about 70km.
Many famous spots like the fabulously chaotic Charlemange rapids just before the arch (above and above left), and the Dent Noire rock (where emergency services stand by on busy days) go oddly unmentioned.

Of the rest, everyone will find some great discoveries in Paddling France. Who’d know to try out the allotment-fringed canals of the hortillonnages off the Somme below Amiens’ gothic cathedral (below; Route 9). Other urban paddles also offer a novel viewpoint on a city which SUP-ing makes easier. Then there’s amazing Etretat on the Normandy coast which is probably geologically contiguous with Dorset’s Studland stacks over a hundred miles away. You’d hope that the rest of the sea paddles on this wild coast have been selected for their accessibility – probably so as rental outfitters will mean they’re a recognised thing. The sight of the book’s sole IK on p5 (Route 1, Corzon peninsula) was heartening, and the glittering granite sand spits of Glénan islands look like a mini Scilly Isles, though you’d think calm days here are infrequent.
There are loads of tempting locales, and of course the book’s many brief itineraries can easily be extended if you ask around or consult other guides.

For her first guidebook Anna Richards has done a great job putting it all together. While it’s not that hard to find brilliant paddles in France, each route offers a locale with a proven appeal and rentals on site. Paddling France is easily worth 20 quid to have this information and inspiration in your hand to browse.
A lot of my reservations are picky, but a printed guidebook from an established travel publisher carries an authority than online braying cannot always match, and with it comes responsibility. More so for paddling, I believe, than walking or cycling guides, for example. After a quick flip through Paddling Britain seems to have achieved this. As detailed above, a tiny amount of work would get Paddling France close to the calibre of that book and the other paddle guides mentioned. If the author didn’t have the paddling experience before setting out to write this guide, you’d think she had it by the time the book was finished.
When I first got into river paddling I thought ‘How do you know that round the corner you won’t get swept into some deadly rapids or sluice with no way of easily getting ashore?’ For this reason, river guides are different other outdoor activities. You can’t always get off the ride. Your typical happy-clappy SUPy Puppy (and budget IK user, for that matter) buys a paddle craft online and hits the water, literally not knowing one side of a paddle blade from another (as the author also notes). Paddleboarding may be associated with the trendy Slow Travel movement, but on the water you can get in trouble fast, which is why it’s important to be across the risks and regs.
We all have to start somewhere nut in my experience, despite months of hard work, all this can often be too much to catch first time round, and to a busy publisher it’s just another title in the production line. Bradt is not a specialist in nautical publishing but a quick pass by a paddle-savvy editor would have caught most of the clangers. With a bit of distance and feedback, very often a guidebook’s second edition is what an author endeavoured to write first time round. I look forward to reviewing that one too.

Evening on the Allier near Langeac (Route 27)

Kayaking and packrafting the Allier (France)

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In 2005 the Dordogne and nearby Vezere were my first multi-day rivers in my Sunny IK, all helped by the discovery of the inspiring White Water Massif Central guidebook. The Dordogne was a good choice but to be honest, a bit easy. Ready for something un peu plus sportif, I’d got it into my head from that book that the Ardeche was too hardcore, so I’d be better off on the less famous Allier between Chapeauroux and Brioude (big map, above).

Gumotex IC and IKs paddling pros on the Allier, 2025. And they al trained back from Brioude – respect!

In fact, as you can read here (admittedly at twice the normal summer flow; video too, as well as the video above), parts of Allier can get tricky (left; a plastic canoe folded against a rock).
Even though a railway carves and tunnels right along the gorge, on the first two days from Chapeauroux there are places where the rapids come at you fast and with no easy way out of the gorge if you get in trouble. Over the years stranded paddlers have been rescued by helicopter.

Not fully comprehending all this, in June 2006 I set off from Chapeauroux in my Sunny, and at the very first bend was flapping about like a salmon with a seizure, trying to stay on track. It went on like that for a while, then eased up and actually got quite pleasant by the time I reached Alleyras for the night. This was more like it; a wild river rather than the broad Dordogne lined with droning pumps irrigating the adjacent farmland.

Next morning a taxi transported me past the then-closed section dodging the Poutes dam below Alleyras (more below) and dropped me at Monistrol. Here again I failed to fully appreciate the greater challenges immediately ahead, even if the guidebook was clear: great fun in a creekboat, but an open canoe will fill up on the longer rapids. And if I didn’t know it then, I sure do now: the white water abilities of open canoes and IKs are closely matched, while IKs might easier to control for beginners (like me).

This Monistrol stage is run by commercial rafting trips (above), also a telling sign about the nature of this part of the river. I scraped through that day, exiting a few rapids with a boat full of water, and on one ending up swimming alongside it. Looking back, I’m pretty sure this was the exit of ‘La Barraque au Ponnet‘ (KM3.5; more below) with that raft above coming through soon after I stopped. It was all a bit of a shock.

Unless you’re confident, I’d suggest not following my example in doing this section alone. Consider a recce in the commercial raft if there’s one going that day, or ask if you can tag along for safety. Or find some paddle pals.

A few kilometres before Prades (KM12 from Monistrol) it all becomes less of a white-knuckle ride, and what followed all the way to the Brioude take-out were fun, Grade 2 rapids and a couple of thought-provoking chutes or easy portages. All manageable in open packboats. As you approach Brioude on the last day, the paddling eases right up so that you start harking back for a bit of eaux vivants.

All along what they now call ‘one of Europe’s last wild rivers’ you’ll pass many striking outcrops of columnar basalt as well as pretty villages (like Chilhac, below) with adjacent campsites, boulangeries, quaint hotels – and not a chain store to be seen.
Like the better known Ardeche and Tarn, the Allier is another Massif classic, still distinctively scenic but with non of the nose-to-tail traffic during busy holiday periods.

Getting there
Although the daily trains aren’t frequent, with riverside stations at Brioude, Langeac, Monistrol, Alleyras and Chapeauroux, the Allier (left) is easy to get to with packboats. First, Easyjet yourself to Lyon, or Ryanair-it to Nimes or Clermont, two cities which are also linked by the scenic Ligne des Cévennes rail line (below). Brioude is an hour south of Clermont, and Chapeauroux is two hours over the hills from Nimes. Between them, Brioude and Chapeauroux span the scenic and paddleable 88-km section of the Allier.

One thing worth considering if you’re unsure about the half-day Grade 3+ Monistrol–Prades section, is coming up on the train from Brioude or Langeac. It passes right above the gorge where you get a good view of the Barraque au Ponnet and a few seconds later the ‘Roche qui Pleure’ drop a few hundred metres upstream (left; Gumotex Scout canoe). I’m sure glad I looked when I came back years later.

In 2018 I returned to the Allier, this time with a packraft. I flew to Lyon (cheaper and more frequent than last-minute Ryanair), caught the train via Clermont to Brioude (5hrs), and next day caught the first train to Monistrol (left).
I planned to miss out the Chapearoux–Alleyras stage to save time and the taxi faff around the dam**. It left me three days to cover about 70 paddling kilometres back to Brioude.

Poutes Dam
**Since around 2021 (click ‘P5’) the long-closed section between Alleyras and Monistrol reopened to paddlers, with a portage around the new Poutes dam (below), 3.5km from Alleyras station (the train line crosses the river right in front of it). See the video link above.
As part of the Allier resalmonification programme, the dam was lowered by 10 metres d and fitted with a ‘ladder’ to help the fish get upstream and propagate – plus give anglers something to do. Local environmentalists fought a long battle to get this done.

The train heading upstream passed right in front of the Brioude weir (left) where I’d be taking out in a couple of days. The line then rejoins the Allier at Langeac before heading for Monistrol. Soon it enters the wild gorge and looking down at the rapids below I thought… ‘Hang on a minute!’ which, a rapid or two later escalated to ‘WTjoF!?’.

I recall being unnerved in 2006, but I’m sure they didn’t look this gnarly. I realised later that the first 100-m white plume was ‘Le Barraque au Ponnet’, easily recognisable on aerial maps. The other was ‘La Roche Qui Pleure’ – two of the plus fruitif chutes on this stage (map below left).

I got off at Monistrol, scoffed a petit dej at a deserted hotel and wandered around town wondering what to do. The river didn’t seem higher than normal; perhaps it was low back in June 2006 when I came through in the Gumboat? Either way, thanks to my train preview this stage seemed a bit too ripe for me; the Yak would be spilling over long before I was halfway through ‘Le Ponnet’.

For a while I actually wondered if I was suffering from false memory syndrome from 2006 and might have cause to claim compensation if I could find the right lawyer. But I definitely recall the old Monistrol hydro plant (right) and my photo record shows I took the picture of the board below at 9.03 and arrived at Prades beach by 1pm, invigorated but not inordinately traumatised. River pictures were few back then in that pre-wet camera era.

Later, trying to work out what was different (other than my aged nerves), I wondered if I’d just glanced down on Le Ponnet during a particularly hearty pulse of dam-released water? Looking at the vigicrues website later, the flow graph for that day (at Prades) does show it was high as I passed by around 8am – before dropping six inches around midday.
I knew from the Tarn earlier this summer that following a stormy night, a six-inch rise makes a difference – it speeds up the flow but can also smother stony rapids and make them easier. The pulsed releases every 8 hours are the lumpy pattern you can see along the bottom of the graph below for the days before and after I came through. As you can tell, I am bending over backwards trying to find ways to rationalise my new-found timidity!
Above left: from the Eiffel bridge in town, you can see the first rapid (looking back upstream). Like the book says: if you don’t like how this or the next couple of runs look, turn back. Otherwise – strap in for the ride!

Annoyingly, my GPS with good maps was at the menders. I took a look off a passing trekker’s map (Monistrol is on the GR65 Santiago trail) but at 1:100k, I was none the wiser. I’d have needed a 1:25k map to find any viable paths along the gorge.

In the end I decided to follow a path by the bridge on the right side of the river, signed: ‘Viaduct, 1 hr’. It might continue along or above the gorge to a point where I could put in with the worst behind me. If it didn’t I could turn back and hitch or bus – or if desperate, clamber uphill to the D301 backroad to Prades.
And that is what I did, but not without a huge amount of effort. Initially, the path followed the riverbank, passing a few Grade 3s (above, probably ‘La Benne’; KM1.8) which would have swamped my Yak like hot ‘creme anglais’ over a freshly baked rhubarb crumble.

Some three hours later, high above the valley and heading for dehydration (33°C in Brioude that day), I gave up trying to follow a path. Fallen trees, brambles, scree slopes, an intermittent path and the 1:1 slope all took their toll. After an aborted attempt climbing a loose cliff, I managed to hack my way uphill and emerged a sweaty mess on the D310 backroad, looking like I’d just escaped from a teenage slasher movie. Scratched, bitten, stung and grazed to buggery, I’d covered 3km in three hours.

I washed in a cattle trough and passed through the sunflower hamlets of Conaquet and Conac, before splitting left down a side track and path leading back downhill, hopefully to rejoin the river below any enraged torrents.

This it did, just before Pont Gilbert and just below ‘La Petite Grille’, by chance nearly the last (and easy-looking) rapid, 8 river-kms from Monistrol. Although it didn’t feel like it at the time, this turned out to be pretty darn good route-finding without a map (left).

At one point earlier, while thrashing through the bush or teetering across scree slopes, I heard the telltale whoops of hyper-excited rafters far below. I realised that’s what I should have done: taken the fun option in a big-arsed raft as far as Pont Gilbert (if they’d take me, with baggage).
I’d seen signs for a rafting centre near Monistrol station, but the town was so quiet I assumed they’d closed for the season. It would have been a great way to punch through the big rapids without a care in the world. Picture above: the ‘Le Ponnet’ viaduct down below with the long ‘Barraque’ rapid starting just around the corner and ‘Roche qui Pleure’ laughing menacingly from behind the trees on the left.

Dropping the kit bag and setting up by the riverside below ‘La Petite Grille’, it had indeed become hot enough to grill a salmon, but once on the water it sure felt good to flop down and float away like a stray log. Just like in the wilds of northwest Scotland, if you have the choice: float, don’t walk.
Obviously part of me wondered if I could have managed the gnarly rapids upstream in the Yak. After all, I’d clearly scraped through years ago in the Sunny (still hard to believe). With someone alongside I’d have been braver but I’d followed my gut and felt happy with that.

Watch Belgian packrafter Dzjow’s video below from 2014. He enjoyed the Monistrol stage so much he went back up on the train and did it again with GoPros rolling. Watching it, I’m glad I didn’t. From Monistrol starts at 1:57 and he shoots down ‘La ‘Roche qui Pleure’ (the image below) at 2:28, soon followed by ‘Barraque au Ponnet’ which starts at 2:34 (note the railway viaduct) and goes on for a while to the big rock (3:19) you’ll recognise on the left in the rafting pic, above. Dzjow was a hardcore adventuriste I’ve come across before. The following year he went on to do a self-admittedly tough and not so enjoyable trip in wild Patagonia. He hasn’t written about packrafting since.

After about 4km I pulled into Prades beach (below left). I needed salt and I needed drink. And while I was at it, what harm would a handmade mini quiche, some bacon crisps and a tartes aux framboises do? None at all, mon brave.

Now dizzyingly revived but still worn out by the morning’s commando course, I knew there was a bit of a drossage (great word) just around the corner, but it was all fun knowing a few others were playing around too, including SUPs. What is it with these SUPs? I’ve never seen them doing anything more than goof about in the shallows but rarely actually go anywhere, yet they’re clearly ten times more popular than IKs and Ps combined. What does that say about the state of post-industrial recreation in the developed world?

Unusually, I had a hotel booked at Reilhac, about 18km downriver, past Langeac. With just a couple of canoes on the water, the afternoon passed without drama, bar the odd wetting. But approaching Langeac, the din from the weir just before town was unusually intimidating. The canoe chute here (left) is well-known as being a bit of a drossage because it’s about 3 feet too short and so pumps a plume of water into a nasty backwave which not all boats can easily escape.

And I do wish these Frenchies would mark the tops of their glissieres with two poles, indicating: ‘aim here’. Above, show me the chute entry point while wearing a pair of sweat-smudged specs! Maybe the idea is by not having clear markers, paddlers slow down and look carefully. I did just that above and portaged round off a little beach on the right. I could not be arsed with hitting the churning pile to get catapulted over the bow like a 40-kilo sack of dried beetroots. I felt that no matter how far back I leaned, my short, light boat would plough ‘n’ flip, unlike a longer IK. Back in the water, I paddled on through early evening Langeac and an hour or so later was slumped on my Reilhac hotel bed.

The next day was just what I wanted; a short, easy run of just 13km, ending at the UNESCO-overlooked village of Lavoute Chilac where the charming Hotel des Pecheurs tottered on the slender gooseneck bluff above the Allier.

Three clicks downriver (6km from Langeac) was a double-drop weir-chute (below left). Easy enough providing you steer straight for the lower drop, but I walked it as I knew it would be a bailing job, and today was some 10 degrees cooler.
Splish followed splosh followed splish down to Chillac (below, 11.5km from Langeac), another picture-perfect village sat atop a striking basalt plug with dreamy views over the Auvergnois countryside from the terrace by the church.

Half a click downstream from Chilac is an easy, short chute (left) on the far left. But once down it I realised the old weir passing below the mill on the right had pretty much been washed away, making the chute redundant and a fun ride down a long, shallow rapid. Clearly I was recovering my mojo if I was looking for some white water action again. Later, I read this weir has been flushed away for some years, but is another thing the new Canoe Trips, South of France guide had not updated.

Soon, the bluff of Lavoute Chilac rose into view. I pulled over left at the riverside park, let my gear dry, then walked into the village over the tall bridge (left).
Les Pecheurs (white building on the right, below) was still on siesta, so I left the Yak by the steps and walked over to Le Prieure, the other creaky-stair hotel in the village, for a mouth-watering ‘Salade Auvergnate‘.

Wandering around the old church and the imposing, 18th-century facade of the abandoned priory (right, due for luxury flat conversion), I was staggered to see a July 1866 flood marker at the church’s back door. In the photo left my hotel room would have been submerged by a few metres. Perhaps the river’s acute 180-degree turn causes floodwaters to back up.

It’s the last day of my packrafting mini-break and by my estimates, I had about 22km of paddling, plus a 4km walk to Brioude station to catch the 4:10 to Lyon. I didn’t want to miss that so set off briskly, passing a canoeing couple (the only other boat I saw all day) until I could estimate my pace against a landmark. Before 11am I’d reached the bridge at Villeneuve meaning I’d covered 9.5 clicks in 80 minutes which gave me plenty of time. This Allier flows quicker than it looks.

The book talks of another old weir to ‘shoot’ at Villeneuve campsite, but there’s nothing here except a ford with poles marking the car crossing. Many of the book’s ‘shoot an old weir’ descriptions are out of date. There’s rarely anything more than a line of rounded boulders and a drop of a few inches, making you wonder: ‘was that it?’ But at Ville Brioude, just before the tall bridge, the book suggests you can shoot a modern concrete weir (left). Good luck with that and those boulders lined along the base.

Finally I was back at the public beach below La Bargesse campsite (45.279097, 3.406962). Ahead was the big weir before the red brick rail bridge I’d crossed on the train a few days earlier (left). Here again the book now suggests ‘portage right’ and other convoluted options – perhaps a simple left/right mistake? Instead you simply take out at the grassy park, river left, walk over a little footbridge and put back in below the weir under the railway bridge and above a shallow rapid.

Once again, I’m amazed at the true amphibiousness of these packrafts, especially if not hauling camping gear on the trail. A long walk to dodge gnarly or closed stages is (potentially) easily done, even carrying an inappropriate kitbag.
With plenty of time to catch my train, I dried off, got changed and walked over to Brioude for a coffee and cake in the town square below the basilica’s decorated tower. In the hills all around, the petrified volcanos and lush grassy valleys of the Auvergne countryside could easily sustain more exploring on foot, by pedal or with paddle.