Guest Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 (edited) Thinking of grabbing a weeks hire in France. Anybody know of any reliable small indendant French hire companies as I'd prefer to avoid the big outfits like Le boat if I can. Any part of the system considered but the further south the better. Thanks. Edited July 10, 2013 by The Dog House Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 Napton Narrowboats have a branch on the Canal du Midi which is about as far South as you can get without falling into the Med! We hired from them a few years ago, good company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Brooks Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 Napton Narrowboats have a branch on the Canal du Midi which is about as far South as you can get without falling into the Med! We hired from them a few years ago, good company. And from reports tend to stick to UK type fuel charge practises rather than rip off charges based on engine hours - take care, great care or you could be hundreds of pounds worse off! (according to a recent thread). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Pink Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 (edited) Thinking of grabbing a weeks hire in France. Anybody know of any reliable small indendant French hire companies as I'd prefer to avoid the big outfits like Le boat if I can. Any part of the system considered but the further south the better. Thanks. There's an english language based one on the midi called Minervois. But beware - Le Boat are in England too! http://www.minervoiscruisers.com/ if you get in touch ask them how I can politely tell them they need a new website ;-) Edited July 10, 2013 by Chris Pink Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted July 10, 2013 Report Share Posted July 10, 2013 Chris, they are the French arm of Napton N/Bs which I mentioned, but I could not think of their name. Thanks for reminding me. We hired from them a few years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 13, 2013 Report Share Posted July 13, 2013 Thanks both, so not a huge amount of French hire company experience on the forum. Thanks Mike for the offer of your copy of Fluvial too. Part way home now and getting withdrawal symptoms already. Calais tomorrow and drive home Sunday.... Glum... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
junior Posted July 13, 2013 Report Share Posted July 13, 2013 Thanks both, so not a huge amount of French hire company experience on the forum. Thanks Mike for the offer of your copy of Fluvial too. Part way home now and getting withdrawal symptoms already. Calais tomorrow and drive home Sunday.... Glum... I'm in Calais working on the port. You'll see me wandering around the berths with my dog. Do say hello if you are passing through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 14, 2013 Report Share Posted July 14, 2013 I'm in Calais working on the port. You'll see me wandering around the berths with my dog. Do say hello if you are passing through. We are travelling via. Eurotunnel so will miss you. And for the pedants yes I know the French end is at Coquelles which is not actually Calais. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boaty Jo Posted July 14, 2013 Report Share Posted July 14, 2013 Thinking of grabbing a weeks hire in France. Anybody know of any reliable small indendant French hire companies as I'd prefer to avoid the big outfits like Le boat if I can. Any part of the system considered but the further south the better. Thanks. I've no personal hiring experience but here is a link to alternative companies on the Midi (nearly as far south as you can get). Big difference in low - high season price and some variation company to company Bear in mind from what I hear, high season can be crowded with lock-waits of 2 hours + As Tony says, check out fuel excesses. Why do you want to avoid the bigger companies - if they were no good people simply wouldn't use them and they must be pretty well geared up for breakdown support etc. Nicols are my favourite lay-out for a holiday boat http://www.creme-de-languedoc.com/Languedoc/activities/canal-boat-hire.php#.UeJN7403DnE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tam & Di Posted July 14, 2013 Report Share Posted July 14, 2013 (edited) Why do you want to avoid the bigger companies - if they were no good people simply wouldn't use them and they must be pretty well geared up for breakdown support etc. Nicols are my favourite lay-out for a holiday boat I'd tend to agree with BJ. Obviously we have no need to hire a boat now, but we did hire a penichette in about 1981 from Locaboat Plaisance and found them just fine. I do prefer the style of the penichette too rather than the "Broads cruiser" type hull - to my mind these are the only decently designed French pleasure craft. I'd agree too about the Canal du Midi, especially this time of year - fine if you like playing at dodgems with hundreds of other hirers and being food for mosquitoes. I may be slightly biased by my liking for Burgundian food and wine, but the canals and rivers of the centre are great, and they won't be short of a bit of sunshine there either. Tam Edited July 14, 2013 by Tam & Di Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boaty Jo Posted July 14, 2013 Report Share Posted July 14, 2013 I'd tend to agree with BJ. Obviously we have no need to hire a boat now, but we did hire a penichette in about 1981 from Locaboat Plaisance and found them just fine. I do prefer the style of the penichette too rather than the "Broads cruiser" type hull - to my mind these are the only decently designed French pleasure craft. Tam Yes, the penichettes are the best looking. Naturally it's just a personal thing. I like the Nicols ones purely because the cooking/living area runs straight out on to a rear deck . You do see quite a number of each in private hands after their hire days are over. Also we like cruising in September / early October. The weather is still generally good (even mid-France) and it's much quieter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tam & Di Posted July 14, 2013 Report Share Posted July 14, 2013 Also we like cruising in September / early October. The weather is still generally good (even mid-France) and it's much quieter. We hired in late September and scarcely saw another soul on the move in 2 weeks between Homps to Carcassonne and back to Aigues Mortes. It's probably busier now than 30 years ago though. It was still ample warm enough to do skinny dipping where the canal was next to the Med - we'd probably need to issue a public hazard warning if we tried that at our present ages though. Tam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
junior Posted July 14, 2013 Report Share Posted July 14, 2013 We are travelling via. Eurotunnel so will miss you. And for the pedants yes I know the French end is at Coquelles which is not actually Calais. I do also work there sometimes but not today so I'll miss you. Have a safe journey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 14, 2013 Report Share Posted July 14, 2013 I do also work there sometimes but not today so I'll miss you. Have a safe journey. Cheers now in Ashford - euro tunnel had a technical problem and we were offloaded and reloaded to another train - delayed us by 30 mins. Very warm on the trains too. Thanks also Tam and BJ will have a look when not on the phone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waterway2go Posted April 3, 2019 Report Share Posted April 3, 2019 Does anyone have recent experience of hire companies in France? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan de Enfield Posted April 3, 2019 Report Share Posted April 3, 2019 Have you got your visa ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Naughty Cal Posted April 3, 2019 Report Share Posted April 3, 2019 On 10/07/2013 at 12:49, Tony Brooks said: And from reports tend to stick to UK type fuel charge practises rather than rip off charges based on engine hours - take care, great care or you could be hundreds of pounds worse off! (according to a recent thread). We paid for the all in one package which included fuel, damage waiver, bike hire, cleaning, and early check in when we hired with Le Boat last year. It worked out considerably cheaper than paying for the fuel per hour and damage waiver separately. On 14/07/2013 at 10:31, Boaty Jo said: Yes, the penichettes are the best looking. Naturally it's just a personal thing. I like the Nicols ones purely because the cooking/living area runs straight out on to a rear deck . You do see quite a number of each in private hands after their hire days are over. Also we like cruising in September / early October. The weather is still generally good (even mid-France) and it's much quieter. We hired in Brittany in October. The weather was mild if a little mixed but the waterways were very quiet. Some days we didn't see another boat on the move! We found it a bit too quiet. We were supposed to be going to Belgium at Easter but the house move has got in the way of that so Le Boat have moved it to this time next year for no extra cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted April 4, 2019 Report Share Posted April 4, 2019 11 hours ago, Waterway2go said: Does anyone have recent experience of hire companies in France? Yes. We have hired from Locaboat for the last four years on the Canal de Garonne, and this year we're hiring from the same company on the Canal de Briare. We hire pénichettes, which we like. They offer a similar all in damage waiver/fuel/cleaning package to Le Boat. You could deal directly with them, but we go through Blue Water Holidays in Yorkshire, who are efficient and helpful. Anything specific which you'd like to know, do ask - via P.M. if you prefer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waterway2go Posted April 6, 2019 Report Share Posted April 6, 2019 Thanks for the advice. Will have a look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Naughty Cal Posted April 6, 2019 Report Share Posted April 6, 2019 On 04/04/2019 at 07:16, Athy said: Yes. We have hired from Locaboat for the last four years on the Canal de Garonne, and this year we're hiring from the same company on the Canal de Briare. We hire pénichettes, which we like. They offer a similar all in damage waiver/fuel/cleaning package to Le Boat. You could deal directly with them, but we go through Blue Water Holidays in Yorkshire, who are efficient and helpful. Anything specific which you'd like to know, do ask - via P.M. if you prefer. We moored in a Locaboat yard for the evening in Brittany. Their boats looked very nice and we would probably look to hire one of theirs at some point. The Le Boat cruisers are more what we are used too over here in the UK but the Locaboat boats were very much more suited to the French waterways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athy Posted April 6, 2019 Report Share Posted April 6, 2019 13 minutes ago, Naughty Cal said: We moored in a Locaboat yard for the evening in Brittany. Their boats looked very nice and we would probably look to hire one of theirs at some point. The Le Boat cruisers are more what we are used too over here in the UK but the Locaboat boats were very much more suited to the French waterways. Le Boat's fleet are probably "sexier", smooth contours, tapered windows etc. I have not compared, but I suspect they're therefore dearer to hire. Your comment about suitability is interesting (especially as the greatly experienced Tam Murrell said something similar early in the thread). What makes them more suitable, do you think? W2Go, I forgot to mention: if you're happier with a narrowboat you can hire one on the Canal du Midi, from Minervois Cruisers who are the French arm of the long-established Napton Narrowboats. We had one from them about 10 years ago and they looked after us well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ditchcrawler Posted April 6, 2019 Report Share Posted April 6, 2019 We hired from Locoboats and had to spend the first night at the yard as they didnt get round to doing the induction until the next morning Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorksboat Posted April 9, 2019 Report Share Posted April 9, 2019 We hired from Locaboat last September, one of their flying bridge penichettes on the Canal du Midi. They were easy to deal with via email, answered all our questions very efficiently - all in english. The handover was perfect, the boat clean and tidy with everything working fine. They have some good deals including up to 30% for the English at present and lots of bases to choose from. Hoping to go again this year if our crew sort themselves out and would recommend them highly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Naughty Cal Posted April 9, 2019 Report Share Posted April 9, 2019 On 06/04/2019 at 16:15, Athy said: Le Boat's fleet are probably "sexier", smooth contours, tapered windows etc. I have not compared, but I suspect they're therefore dearer to hire. Your comment about suitability is interesting (especially as the greatly experienced Tam Murrell said something similar early in the thread). What makes them more suitable, do you think? W2Go, I forgot to mention: if you're happier with a narrowboat you can hire one on the Canal du Midi, from Minervois Cruisers who are the French arm of the long-established Napton Narrowboats. We had one from them about 10 years ago and they looked after us well. We found that the cruiser that we hired from Le Boat was difficult to fender up when mooring up and the moorings were never that suitable for the gunnel height and shape. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waterway2go Posted November 21, 2019 Report Share Posted November 21, 2019 On 04/04/2019 at 07:16, Athy said: Yes. We have hired from Locaboat for the last four years on the Canal de Garonne, and this year we're hiring from the same company on the Canal de Briare. We hire pénichettes, which we like. They offer a similar all in damage waiver/fuel/cleaning package to Le Boat. You could deal directly with them, but we go through Blue Water Holidays in Yorkshire, who are efficient and helpful. Anything specific which you'd like to know, do ask - via P.M. if you prefer. We eventually got our act together and have now booked a boat on the Canal Du Nivernais from Locaboat, through Blue Water Holidays - who have been most helpful as described by others. As Nicholsons don't stretch that far, does anyone have a recommendation for the best cruising guide for France ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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