Late spring and early summer paddling in Southern France is all about gently flowing rivers, and warm, friendly white water at a moderate grade, paddling beneath the limestone walls of the many steep-sided valleys that cut through the southern flanks of the Massif Central. Except this year, that is, when the rains of spring had been non-stop, and the rivers of France were full or flooding. It was therefore with a bit of a sense of trepidation that I headed on the long road so

For nearly ten years now, I've been exploring the backwaters of my local rivers, especially the Wey. I've had some wonderful moments, on beautiful meandering streams, away from the hubbub of modern life. Near the ancient ruins of Newark Priory, under the tree-shaded slopes of a bluebell clad hillside, a small river, more of a stream in fact, meanders down to its confluence with the Wey. This is the Hoe Stream, though confusingly it also seems to be called The Bourne at this p

Basingstoke: a much-maligned town thought of as urban and boring by many. Canal: a stretch of water thought by many to be full of shopping trolleys and dead dogs. If you believe the above, then putting the words together shouldn't offer much hope of a rural idyll. You'd be wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I hope to describe. The Basingstoke Canal was built in the late18th Century, connecting what was then a small market town with the much older Wey Navigation near its j