Who Says an Inn-to-Inn Journey Needs a Road?

During a recent conversation with a couple of our cycling guests, the subject of canoeing came up.

They'd enjoyed numerous bicycle tours over the years and also liked canoeing on lakes back home. But when we mentioned inn-to-inn canoeing holidays, they were surprised. The idea of exploring a destination by canoe, in much the same way they'd explored so many places by bicycle, had simply never occurred to them.

It's a reaction we've encountered before.

We've been organizing inn-to-inn canoe journeys for decades, although we've only recently made them a bigger part of our adventures. And we're discovering that even experienced active travelers don't always realize this way of exploring the world exists.

After all, if you enjoy traveling from village to village by bicycle or on foot, why not let a river show you the way?

Let the river show you around

Consider the Dordogne in southwestern France.

Here, the river winds through a landscape of limestone cliffs, wooded hillsides, medieval villages and châteaux that seem to have been placed on the heights specifically to impress passing travelers.

From a canoe, the perspective is entirely different.

Instead of approaching a village along a road, you might first spot its rooftops above the riverbank. A château appears high on a cliff. A stone bridge comes into view around a bend, followed by a stretch of countryside where the only sounds are birds, moving water and the occasional splash from your paddle.

There's no need to hurry. The current helps carry you along, and the river has been finding its way through this landscape for considerably longer than any of us have been planning holidays.

You simply follow along and see what comes next.

A different way to travel, not a new sport to master

It's easier to learn how to canoe a scenic river like the Dordogne than it was to learn how to ride a bicycle.

And that's part of the appeal. You don't need a long history of canoeing adventures. The canoe is simply your way of traveling through the countryside, just as a bicycle might be on another holiday.

The real adventure is everything you encounter along the way.

The pleasures don't end at the riverbank

And what a lovely part of France to explore.

The Dordogne has villages to wander through, lively markets to explore and a regional food culture that provides plenty of reasons to linger.

Take cabécou, for example. These little rounds of goat cheese appear throughout the journey, at breakfast tables, in village shops and on restaurant menus. And there's something particularly satisfying about chèvre chaud, warm goat cheese served on a bed of local greens, after a day on the river.

Then there are the stone villages, narrow streets, cafés and riverside terraces where an afternoon can disappear rather more quickly than expected.

Traveling by canoe doesn't mean leaving those pleasures behind. It simply gives you a different way to arrive at them.

And when the day's journey is done, there's a comfortable inn, a good meal and time to enjoy the place you've reached.

Tomorrow brings another stretch of river, another village and probably another excuse to investigate the local cheese.

We consider that a perfectly reasonable itinerary.

The journey is the destination

Inn-to-inn canoeing combines many of the pleasures active travelers already enjoy: exploring under your own power, discovering new places, enjoying local food and ending the day at a welcoming inn.

The canoe simply connects those experiences.

That's why we enjoy journeys like our Dordogne canoe tour. The river isn't an attraction you visit for an hour before moving on to the next stop. It's the route itself, carrying you through the countryside at a pace that gives you time to notice things.

And once you've experienced France this way, you might begin looking at other rivers a little differently.

After all, who decided that an inn-to-inn adventure had to follow a road?