The Tarn

The Tarn is, beside the Ardeche, one of the most popular rivers to hang down in Southern France. Surely you can spent the day with paddling, but why should you? It's much more relaxing just to sit in the boat, enjoy the beautiful surrounding through gorges and forests and drink a good glas of wine. And so did we, a group of 9 people in late May 2004.

We took advantage of a holiday weekend in Switzerland and drove to St. Enimie (or Eminem, what you prefer), a pittoresque village on the Tarn, south of St. Etienne near Lyon. It's a long trip, but as usual, we started in the night, drove most of the distance straight and looked out for a nice campingground somewhere in the forest. So the next day not much was left, and we enjoyed the scenic drive to St. Enimie, where we met the rest of the group. Actually we were 9 people, so we needed 5 boats, what we got at Canyon, the best of the several renting stations around St. Enimie. Not only they made a good price, they also provided us with the necessary information about wild camping along the Tarn while we drove up to the starting point.

Like always when you travel with Svoboda-Family- Members, you can be sure that they beat each other with gimicks they take with you, so the waterproof boxes soon started to be full. But with Marek, you also have a lot of food with you, therefore priorities had to be set.

So we enjoyed three relaxed days and two spacy nights on and beside this wonderful river. It floats to a changing surrounding including gorges, where Caro enjoyed climbing (and swimming), field and forests, and barrages, where Schibli and Martin tried to keep themself dry (thanks for the spectacle!). The Tarn is absolutly recommended to people who like to move in the nature but want to have the most relaxing and energy saving way to do it!

An extraordinary touch to our pictures of that trip is definitely set by Pia's ability to see everything a bit different, don't miss that!!