There’s a particular kind of silence that falls over a canal when a barge approaches something it cannot pass. A fallen tree across the channel, a sand-bar, a lock under repair. On most of the hotel barges, that silence lasts a while. Converted from working freighters built to haul grain and gravel, they are magnificent vessels, but they have long memories and little appetite for changing their minds. Once they’re committed, they’re committed.
The Randle was never a freighter. She was built as a cruiser, designed from the keel up to carry people rather than cargo, and that simple fact shapes everything about the way she moves. At 22 metres she’s more compact than her converted cousins, she sits with a shallower draft, and she answers the helm with an eagerness that still makes her captain smile. Built to an exceptionally high standard and powered today by renewable fuel, she’s less a floating hotel than an elegant yacht: made to measure, and all the better for it.
22 metres of classic yachting charm.
That difference follows you below deck, too. On a converted freighter, daylight arrives only through a row of portholes. The Randle‘s cabins were conceived as cabins from the start, so alongside her vintage portholes each is lit from above by a skylight. You wake to the soft light of a Burgundy morning spilling down from overhead, watch the riverbank slide past at eye level, and on a clear night you can lie back and see the stars drift by. It’s a small detail on paper, and an unforgettable one in person.
The master and twin cabins, each with its own skylight and portholes.
The historic old town of Clamecy, once the heart of the log-rafting trade that fed Paris its firewood, sits at a bend of the Yonne where the river has quietly built up a sand bar across the approach to the port. For the larger hotel barges, it is now simply off limits. The Randle is currently the only one that can slip over the shallows and tie up in the port itself, which means our guests step ashore into the medieval streets, the market, and the grand Gothic Collégiale Saint-Martin, whose story begins in 1075.
That same agility shapes where we can take you. Of all the six-night cruises on the Nivernais, ours is the longest, running all the way from Auxerre to Chevroches, and along the way we turn off the main river to visit Vermenton, a charming detour up the little branch towards the Cure that the larger boats pass by. More waterway, more villages, more quiet mornings on deck: when your boat is built to go further, it seems only right that she should.
More waterway, more villages, more quiet mornings on deck.
Then there are the surprises. Canals are living things, and every season brings its share of the unexpected. When The Randle meets an obstacle, she simply turns around, finds another stretch of water, and the day carries on with barely a pause in the conversation on deck, whilst larger vessels are left waiting.
The wheelhouse saloon, with all-round views whatever the river brings.
Perhaps the best description of her came not from us but from one of the captains on the Nivernais. Being passed by The Randle, he said, was like being passed by a classic Porsche on the motorway. We’ve never quite recovered from the compliment. It captures something we’ve always felt: that elegance and agility belong together, and that the finest experiences often come in the most thoughtfully made packages.
Sometimes the best way to see Burgundy is aboard the boat that was built for exactly that. Go further and find adventure aboard The Randle.
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 Tim Harrold is owner and captain of the Randle, a beautiful and classically styled river boat fitted with two en-suite cabins and all the modern facilities to travel in comfort.Tim offers private barge tours on the picturesque Burgundy Canal du Nivernais and river Yonne. A luxury cruise with Tim and his crew includes gourmet cuisine, fine wine, and guided tours by private car to vineyards and chateaux. Learn more about Edge Charter and barge trips on the Randle along Burgundy's canals and rivers here. Slow Travel Tours is an affiliation of small-group tour operators who offer personalized trips in Italy, France and other European countries. |
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