Marseille-les-Aubigny France
Frequently Asked Questions
At the river landing in the middle of the village, alongside the low houses that have watched hulls pass for nearly two centuries. Basic shops are immediately nearby.
Not at all. Marseilles-lès-Aubigny is a village in the Berry, on the Loire lateral canal, hundreds of kilometres from the Mediterranean city. Only the name causes confusion.
Because it stood at the junction of the Loire lateral canal and the old Berry canal. In the 19th century, dozens of barges lay alongside, with boatmen, full warehouses and towing horses. The traffic fell silent; the water stayed.
The converted warehouses, the lock-keepers' cottages, the rings set into the stone of the quays, and the junction of the old Berry waterway, abandoned in the mid-20th century.
Watch a lock operate, walk or cycle the towpath, then reach the banks of the Loire a few minutes away. There is no monument to visit: this is a call about landscape.
About ten minutes per filling, time enough for crews to swap news of the reach. The conversation is part of the manoeuvre, and this ballet of paddles and lines has barely changed since the days of the horses.
Yes, a few minutes on foot is enough. Golden sandbanks, backwaters, shifting currents: it is Europe's last great wild river, and it is precisely because it is barely navigable that the canal was dug alongside it.
It is an eighteen-arch water viaduct completed in 1838, about ten kilometres to the south, carrying boats across the Allier. Many itineraries use it, and the slow, silent passage above the river is one of the trip's high points.
La Charité-sur-Loire, some fifteen kilometres upstream: its Cluniac priory, World Heritage listed as part of the Compostela routes, and its bookshops make a fine half day.
It suits those who like quiet and walking. Main roads ignore this village; anyone looking for major sights will be disappointed. Cyclists, though, find a flat towpath, shaded in places.
