Going with the flow on River Lot

So there we were, executing a perfect manoeuvre in front of the Germans, on a glassy, calm evening on a mellow French river, at the end of a perfect day. The banks smelt of ripe fruit, the villagers of Vers were out playing boules under the plane trees, and we had the prospect of a fine dinner onshore in a local auberge.

All we had to do was to bring the good ship Salsa alongside the quay, where overnight mooring was welcomingly free of charge, and stop with our bows a couple of feet away from the German stern.

Our bows couldn't have been better behaved, and the Germans continued to read peacefully in their deckchairs, unconcerned at our approach, when all of a sudden there was an almighty thump, crash and tinkling of glass from behind. In our approach we'd forgotten to make allowances for overhanging branches, and turned around to see the table on the Salsa's upper deck being slowly tipped over, along with assorted cameras, bottles and china. The Germans dropped their books and looked on, aghast.

That moment of incompetence was the only blemish on an otherwise immaculate day in south-west France, a day spent purring gently upriver through canyons of green, admiring unspoilt perched villages, passing under ancient suspension bridges and working a gentle succession of locks which, for the most part, had stood welcomingly open and only saw a few passing boats a day. It was a bucolic, hypnotic, therapeutic way of savouring a slice of rural France.

We were on the River Lot, not one of the best-known French waterways, but that suited us fine. The navigable part of the river runs parallel with the Dordogne, but around 50km to the south, which means that the Dordogne soaks up all the Brits, leaving the Lot in peace.

Accordingly the river valley has all of the physical attributes — the fortified villages on steep escarpments, the caves, the vineyards, and the pretty towns on bends in the river — that make the Dordogne a tourism honeypot, but it has none of the latter's crowds.

Our daily routine was hardly arduous, starting with breakfast on deck once somebody had managed to find the nearest boulangerie. Then an upriver saunter towards a lunch spot, admiring the vineyards and the pocket-sized riverside châteaux, and tackling a couple of locks en route.

The latter, being manual and self-operated, took a bit of clambering over and handle-mongering, but also provided an opportunity to stop and stretch, to survey the fields and to sniff the air, at a pace entirely in keeping with the destination.

It's a fact that car-based travel is simply too fast for this kind of experience; in a car, you tend to head for big-ticket destinations, forever pushed onwards by traffic. On the Salsa we were enjoying being in the midst of everything. On the biggest meander in the river we came across Cahors, the Lot's metropolis, with a core that still had 350 medieval houses, in streets reminiscent of a north African medina.

Thanks to its location, hemmed in by the Lot, Cahors had never grown much beyond medieval size, and proved ideal for exploration from a grassy riverside mooring. Its market, around the skirts of the city's cathedral, was brimming with ruby-red tomatoes, walnut breads and local sheep's cheeses.