Canal du Midi (Carcassonne) – Montolieu
Along The Waterways

Bookshops for Boaters

France is  blessed with eight so-called ‘book villages’ and for those of us partial to cruising the French waterways while reading an excellent novel, three of these villages are either actually on canals or rivers, or within easy reach of one.

In Burgundy – Cuisery and La Charité-sur-Loire

In our time we have stopped off at Cuisery in Burgundy which can be found on the banks of the River Seille, a tributary of the Saone, and is home to a dozen booksellers and a respected monthly book fair. As we like to marry our visits with delicious food or wine wherever possible,  Cuisery is a mere thirty six miles from Bourg-en-Bresse, home of France’s famous appellation contrôlée Poulet de Bresse – the finest chicken you will ever eat.

We have also nodded in at La Charité sur Loire which is about thirty five miles from Clamecy on the Canal du Nivernais. La Charite is a town steeped in nine hundred years of history – not only did Joan of Arc fight to free it from the grip of the English enemy, but it is a way station on the pilgrimage to Santiago De Compostela and as such its beautiful church Sainte Croix de Notre Dame is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There is so much to admire that you will barely have time to browse in any bookshops, especially when you find out that La Charite is only eight miles upstream of Pouilly sur Loire, birthplace of the inimitable Pouilly Fumé white wine.

Near Carcassonne – Montolieu

Montolieu is the daddy of all French book villages, and it is certainly our favourite.  It is perched on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the River Dure in the Montagnes Noires eleven miles north of Carcassonne on the Canal du Midi, so a modest hop from your luxury hotel barge. From the top of the hundred metre gorge the views all around are stunning. Bibliophile Michel Braibant founded the Arts and Crafts Museum of the Book here in 1991, creating a magnet for like-minded people and now the village boasts fifteen bookshops, five arts and crafts ateliers, three photographers’ studios and one organic vegetable vending machine (I’ll come back to that in a minute). Not bad for a population of only eight hundred people.

That vending machine – we have never seen one before, but it is absolutely entrancing and very practical.  Local producers lock their organic courgettes or grapes or tomatoes into one of the glass-fronted boxes and all you have to do is make your choice, put the requisite number of coins into the slot, and the door swings open.  That – and the village itself – seems like magic to us.

If the vegetable vending machine were not enough there is also a bistro and a café and a fabulous wine shop and it is sheer heaven to wend your way through the narrow streets window-gazing, taking pictures and maybe buying some handmade paper as a souvenir of your French Waterways vacation to take home with you.  And, so rumour has it, the village comes complete with its own resident writer – it is said that Patrick Suskind, author of the best-selling novel (or “erotic masterpiece“) Perfume, lives in the area.

Canal du Midi – Le Somail

Montolieu is the daddy of bookshop villages, but Le Somail, also on the Canal du Midi, has the daddy of bookshops. The scope and breadth of subject, age and condition amongst the 50,000 volumes contained within this very big, very high ‘book-barn’ space is simply stunning and recognised world-wide.

by Kate Dunn

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