Me, my husband and his (adorable) parents want to take a barge trip somewhere in France between 8/26 and 9/10. A majority of the posts refer to self drive barges but we'd prefer to float, eat, drink and bike ride - not work! From reading the previous posts I know we will want to head upstream and only go one way. Any recommedations of firms to use or routes preferred?

Grand Circle Tours does some nice barge trips, including one down the Rhône. One of the regulars on the bonjourparis.com web site recently took that trip and enjoyed it very much.

My parents did a barge trip with Grand Circle (as mentioned above) and liked it very much. Sounds like just what you are looking for (unlesss you want a boat to yourself w/ a driver?). Theirs was on the Danube and included Budapest, Vienna, etc. but they spoke favorably about the company, boat, crew and staff.

We are "Do-it-Yourselfers", but here are a couple of links that might get you started on the kind of cruise your folks might like:

http://www.canalsoffrance.com/

http://www.journaldemillau.com/franc...ecruisefrance/

Have a wonderful trip!

Don't know about the "upstream" thing. When we were on our Burgundy trip we could never tell where we were (or care, for that matter) anyway. We were on rivers and canals and went where the sightseeing/wine tastings were. Look for French Continental Waterways for their barges. Or just google for French barges and you'll come up with many. It was a terrific experience--absolutely first class in service in every way. You may be a bit late for the better trips at this point. I recommend the small barges. If you do a search I have posted rather extensively previously--on threads that also include the self drivers.

This should have what you are looking for: http://www.francecruises.com/

I found this site by googling "Luciole," the name of the barge taken by the author of the bonjourparis article that Underhill referred to. Or, on second thought, maybe this was a different article since this one described barging in Burgundy. Anyway,the Luciole is only one of 20-30 barges mentioned on this site, with various sizes, length of cruise, routes and prices.

http://www.francetourism.com/practicalinfo/barging.htm

This is a terrific site from the Office of French Tourism that seems to have all the barges in France. We travelled on the Lafayette and saw the Mirabelle. Our trip was arranged by Abercrombie and Kent but the barge was Continental Waterways.

If you are not driving the barge, it makes no difference whether you go upstream or downstream, since you have no control over the general schedule. While the barge is going through the locks, regardless off the time it takes, you could be riding a bicycle out in the countryside.

I took it to mean they didn't want to end up in the town they started, but that was my point--our barge meandered around and we probably didn't travel 50 miles total. It was just a round trip to the TGV station basically but there was not backtracking, which may be the real point. Everything was new.
And in our case, you could ride bicycles up the "towpath" of the canal but not out into the countryside. At night when moored I suppose you could take a bike and ride out into the countryside. We didn't but I suppose it could happen.

This in reply is also a correction to the post by Underhill which I had previously mentioned in another thread on the same subjecy. I had a wonderful river trip on a BOAT/Ship..not a barge. It was up the Rhone/Soane and the entire trip was from Nice to Paris, the water part was from Arles to Dijon. Barges usually hold from 8/12 passangers while a river boat is from 50 to over 200. So the trip s are quite different.

Gee, Al, you never miss a thing!