Pierre Sallin talks about his barge holiday

Pierre Sallin and his wife Inès are looking forward to their 12th holiday next month aboard a ‘Pénichette’^® canal barge

We came across Locaboat quite by chance during our canal boat holiday in Ireland, while we were moored at a canal boat base in Ballinamore. That was how we came to look around a Flying Bridge 1020 Pénichette^®  and we really fell in love at first sight with its slightly nostalgic retro design. Inside though, the boat is fully equipped and really modern. Ever since then, we’ve been setting off twice a year for about three weeks in a Pénichette^® – we like to take our time. One of our fondest memories is a holiday in Brittany on the Nantes-Brest Canal in 2011. It’s quite a tricky route, with one stretch where you have to pass through 52 locks in two days! But that’s just what we liked about it. We also got to know the really friendly men and women who look after the locks. They helped us a lot. One evening, one of them even invited us to eat with them at one of the many wonderful, flower-decked locks you find in that area. Once we got back to Switzerland, we sent them some chocolate to say thank you, but next month we won’t bother the postman: we’re going to deliver it by hand because we’ve booked to do the same route again!

We’ve been cruising with Locaboat now for about ten years and the thing that touched us most in all that time was their kindness to us when my mother-in-law died: we were supposed to set off that week and, without us even having to ask, Locaboat postponed our holiday, for no extra charge and without us having to produce any kind of proof. We were really touched by it, and if we hadn’t already been sure that we’d made the right choice, that would have convinced us!