The Great Ascent

I remember it as if it were a picture. A large painting in pastel colours, harbouring hundreds of smaller scenes within it.

From left to right: the estuary, the port, the big city, the lights, the red buoys, the green buoys, then no more buoys, the islands, the villages, the bridges, three wooden boats along the riverbank, a dam.

Some twenty boats cross the painting. Traditional craft like fûtreaux, toues a Non-Chaland… Some have sails, while others are motoring gently along. I can see a boat under a bridge; it’s the Mélusine and its crew who are using a pole out in the eddies. A small group with their feet in the water have tossed them a line and are pulling in unison.

Crowds on the riverbanks

Myriad villages are depicted all along the river. Crowds on the riverbanks await the arrival of the boats, refreshment stalls have been set up and chairs stand in a circle, ready for the day’s discussion: ‘Sand and Sediments: The Work of the River’. Several stands have been erected for the occasion, along with market stalls, exhibitions and concerts. You can see a figure dressed in blue and red perched on a barrel – it’s the Loire town crier! They roll up at the ports to share the day’s news.

In one corner of the picture, blue chairs are arranged on the Loire riverbed. Several creatures have taken a seat there. A salmon and a lamprey chat with a fisherman, a swan, a boatwoman, an EDF employee, a beaver, a shipwreck, a swimmer and a kayaker share their different perspectives and experiences of the river.

In the port of Orléans, the boats are moored. The journey has come to an end.

To live on the Loire is to live apart from the world, outside the flow of time – enough to make you feel dizzy back on land.

Paulin Champenois
Landscape gardener