European Inland Waterways

Welcome to the Home Page of the new European Inland Waterways Section.

CA members have been interested in Inland Waterways for  a long time, and the first CA Guide to French Inland Waterways was published in 1975.

At that time, the French Canal network was probably seen as an easy way of getting to and from the Mediterranean without being exposed to the rigours of the Bay of Biscay. In recent years the attractions of inland cruising have become more widely appreciated in their own right, and the political changes following the fall of the Berlin wall, and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union have served to open up significant new cruising grounds. 

There are almost 30,000 km of navigable rivers and canals in Europe; by comparison a round the world voyage is typically a little over 40,000 km.

The 8800 km of France covered in the CA Inland Waterways CIS was supplemented by 1600 km of Belgium in 2000, and in 2006 a more modest addition was that of Luxembourg, (with 38 km of waterway and just one excellent marina.)   Extending our coverage to much greater parts of the navigational network will be a major long term task for the Section, especially for those coutries where commercially available guides and charts are limited.

To start, the Section plans to use the My CA website to display News Pages, offering up-to date information about inland navigational matters, as well as  a Forum on which members can discuss inland cruising ideas, questions and plans.

An ambitious, but worthwhile long term aim for the section is to seek to offer the level of expertise and practical support to members on European Inland Waterways that the Baltic and Mediterranean Sections do so well for their respective areas. 

Anyone interested in joining (or even better, becoming actively involved in the Section) is asked to contact the Section Secretary (roger.edgar@dial.pipex.co.uk).

Roger Edgar                              10 March 2008

24 March 2008.  The attachment below summarises new French information on the VNF website (www.vnf.fr).