1)No boat license required. One of things that makes the Mayenne particularly attractive is that you don’t need a boat license – you get a short introduction, then a chance to demonstrate your skills – at a maximum of 10km per hour! Once you’ve shown you know what you’re doing, you’re off! The whole process takes a couple of hours.
2) Choose Your Houseboating Crew Wisely. You need at least one person, more than one is ideal, to operate the boat and at least another to help guide the boat through the locks (on our route there were 18 each way – if memory serves correctly). So, when you’re putting your houseboating group together, be sure to keep this in mind. You don’t want to end up with a group where everyone wants to relax and no one wants to captain the boat. It can be a lot of work for one person, especially if you’re planning on covering relatively long distances each day.
3)You Need a Cook. While it’s possible to grab lunch or dinner at a few places along the way, it’s likely it won’t always coordinate well with your schedule. At least it didn’t for us and we ended up eating on the boat more often than I would have liked – when I’m in France, I want to eat French food – not my cooking! So that means that in addition to at least one captain and helper, you also need at least one person to cook and do the dishes afterwards. On our boat we were a group of six and rotated the cooking and cleaning duties which worked well. My husband J.P. and Petar rotated captain duties.
Entering one of the narrow locks with the lock keeper guiding us…in French.
4)Learn the Boat Traffic Signs. These are in a book on the boat, but you really need to know them before you start captaining your boat. You don’t want to see a sign and be busy looking it up as you hit rock bottom and realize too late that whoops… it meant avoid this way due to low water!
5) The locks are open from 9:00 to 19:00 and closed for lunch between 12:30 and 1:30. If you’re on a tight schedule, try to coordinate your lunch breaks to be at the same time to avoid hanging out waiting for a lock to open.
6) Key an Eye on the Water Tank. You really don’t want to run out of water mid shower. You can fill it at most of the locks, but do it before you really need to, just to be on the safe side.
Our houseboat…and bikes!
7) Buy Groceries Beforehand. I really enjoyed eating breakfast on the boat and you’ll want to buy enough groceries for at least a couple of lunches or dinners – see #3 above. This includes toilet paper, garbage bags, dish soap, everything. None of it was included on our boat.
8)Bring Your Own Power Connectors. There is no way to charge a phone/camera/computer on board without a USB stick or a charger that you plug into a lighter. We found this out the hard way and ended up going from store to store for a couple of hours until we found one.
9) Plan to Chill. Yes, you can have a plan, but be flexible. Ours changed almost everyday as we reached places faster or slower than we had anticipated.
Lock-side dining along the Mayenne! That’s our boat and J.P. our self-appointed captain.
10) Bring a Good Book and a Bike. If you’re not captaining the boat or cooking, there is plenty of time to chill so bring a good book. I can only do so much chilling, so opted to cycle some of the time. Fortunately we were each offered a bike when we boarded. There’s a path that runs parallel to the river and with the boat going a maximum of 10km/h, you can cycle slowly and still be faster than the boat. We arranged to meet at locks, where we could put the bike back on board. I loved the cycling option!
Me cycling along the bike path that runs parallel to the river, so you can’t get lost!
11) Plan a WIFI Detox. There is no WIFI onboard and limited places along the way (you can find it in Laval or Château-Gontier). With a French SIM card, I’m assuming you’d have more access, but none of our group had this so I can’t verify that. As someone who is almost always connected, I really enjoyed the detox.
12) Make Time for Sightseeing Along the Way. As relaxing as it is being on the boat, it’s also nice to get off the boat. Laval and Château-Gontier are the two largest cities along the way (you can see our route at the bottom of this post). I loved Laval and really enjoyed the Refuge de L’Arche, an animal rescue centre in Château-Gontier. Full disclose: They also had rescued monkeys, which may have contributed to how much I liked it! Plan to spend a morning or afternoon in each if time allows. There are also smaller interesting places of interest along the way, but you have to know where these are in advance, as there are no signs along the river. We realized too late that there was an interesting monastery that we had missed. I wish I would have done more research prior to boarding the houseboat so that I could have visited the smaller lesser-known sights along the way.
Peacock seen at the Refuge de l’Arche animal sanctuary in Château-Gontier.
13) It Helps To Speak French. We were fortunate to have Elena on board who is fluent in French which really helped as we were approaching locks and the lock keeper was shouting instructions. If you don’t speak French, it’s worth taking the time to learn a few basic words – i.e. backwards, forward, left and right for starters.
14) Limit Your Luggage. Storage space is really limited so pack light. Backpacks that fold up are easier to store than hard-covered suitcases.
15) Don’t Fill Your Boat to Capacity. Our boat could have slept 9, but we had 6 on it which we all felt was perfect. Anymore and it would have been crowded. There’s not a lot of breathing room on boats to begin with, so leave a little extra space to make your trip more comfortable.
Lastly, don’t forget the wine! Houseboating is a true slow travel option. You really get time to soak up the landscape when you’re travelling at 10km/hour. And the sunsets. I’ll never forget the sunsets! And lets face it, doesn’t wine make everything better?
Sunset along the Mayenne.
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