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This brochure is provided by Green River Canoes Ltd and gives some ideas for Family Canoe Trips as also described on the website at www.greenrivercanoes.com . You can also reach us at: https://www.facebook.com/greenrivercanoes https://twitter.com/canoegreenriver For any questions please email us at info@greenrivercanoes.com or use the form at http://greenrivercanoes.com/contact-us You can subscribe to our infrequent newsletter to receive news of new trips, schedules and offers. Steven House
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“Contents Family Trips
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Family Trip: Belgium Ardennes
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Family Trip: Célé
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Acknowledgements
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Family Trips We provide Guided Inn-to-Inn Canoeing Holidays to the south of France in the Perigord, Lot, Ardeche and Tarn regions and also to the Ardennes region of Belgium. We provide hand-crafted vacations to combine a pleasant activity, canoeing, with an insight into the regional history and natural history whilst enjoying the local foods and wines. All our holidays comprise of mostly canoeing with some (often optional) hiking. The itinerary is planned but is flexible enough to be changed on the day if required. All our holidays are guided. Our guests will be accompanied on the river and trail by an experienced guide who knows the area and rivers well. Our other guide will accompany us in the background by driving our vehicle between lodgings. When necessary this vehicle will be transferring our luggage, meeting with us for lunch and generally being available as and when needed. During each season Green River Canoes dedicates some of its Inn-to-Inn Guided Canoe Trips to the idea of families with youngish children to come canoeing with us to the Belgium Ardennes and to the Perigord and Lot regions in the south of France.
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These trips will coincide with the school holidays, including the breaks around Easter and Whitsun, the long summer holidays and the half-term holiday in the Autumn term (usually towards the end of October). The trips will operate on the same schedule as our other trips to the region except that we will make special efforts to ensure that the focus is on the wants of the children especially when it comes to the amount of time spent canoeing, the activities we pursue away from the river and making sure the children are fed and watered at suitable times. This is not to say that the adults will not also have a great time. The trips we schedule in the school holidays will be those of a shorter duration: 5, 6 or 7 days. Although of course longer trips can be arranged. We offer a discount to children under 12 years of age of 25% for the first child and 50% for subsequent children. For young adults under 18 the discount is 15% for the first and 25% for others.
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On all the trips we will endeavour to engage the children not only in learning how to canoe, but also assist them in attaining a certain level of water-craft and to become involved in the natural history surrounding us in and around the rivers. We will also encourage the children to become engaged in the history of the region we visit in particular where we can visit castles and other historical sites. Of course we realise that this is a holiday too so we will try to avoid a too heavy-handed approach and take our lead from both the parents and the children about how we spend our time. We will also encourage the children to learn something of the local culture where we are; this will involve the local cuisine obviously but also the observation and joining in of local events. We often
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come across FĂŞtes and Fairs and Festivals during the summer months. We will usually canoe in tandem with one adult and one child per canoe, and if the paddlers become sufficiently proficient during the week then we may allow two children to paddle together. Closely watched, of course. Children must be 7 years of age and be able to swim 25 metres. Life-jackets are worn by everyone when on the water. Children older than 12 may canoe together after we have observed how competent they are. The rivers on these trips have no white-water or rapids although the river can flow quickly in places. On our first few days canoe instruction will be given and everyday we will go over the safety drill before starting the paddle for the day.
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Family Trip: Belgium Ardennes This week long trip uses three rivers that run through the Belgium Ardennes close to the French border. Each river sits in a deep and wooded valley in an area with very few villages, towns or even roads. We will begin with a two day paddle down the Ourthe river, then three days on the Semois and then a final day on the Lesse. We will rendezvous at the beginning of the trip at the Midi station in Brussels for those arriving by the Eurostar or Brussels or Charleroi Airports if flying in. If you are driving then we will arrange for a suitable rendezvous point where you can leave your car for the duration of the trip. We will, of course, return you to the same place when the trip has finished. The rivers provides easy paddling with no rapids larger than riffles.
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The trip is fully described on our website with a summary, a dayto-day schedule and a look at the accommodation we use. Alternatively you can download a brochure here for reading offline.
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Family Trip: Célé This five day includes a three day paddle down the Cele river, a day paddling on the Lot (the Célé flows into the Lot) or a day spent hiking. We usually rendezvous with those arriving by train from Paris at Brive station from where we have an hours drive to the Célé valley. We can also arrange to rendezvous at regional airports such as Brive or Bergerac. If you drive down then we will meet somewhere convenient or at our first nights accommodation. We do of course return you to the rendezvous at the end of the trip. The Cele is a small remote stream running down a deep valley where it meanders past high white limestone cliffs, small woodlands and the tiniest of villages. We will have plenty of time to explore both the river and villages as we paddle a continuous stretch of the river from Korn all the way down to where it joins the Lot river. As we are not allowed to paddle before 11am we will take some small hikes in the woods and cliffs and villages along the valley. This gives us the chance to visit the ancient Abbeys and find some remote Dolmens. When we get down to the village of Cabrerets we will take time off from the river to visit the underground caves at Peche Merle. In here we can marvel at cave paintings more than 25,000 years old. If we decide to canoe the Lot river then we can enjoy a paddle on a much larger river and meander past the chateaus and villages along the river and take a ride on several glissieres - this are slides built into the weirs for our canoes to run down. Otherwise we can take a long and beautiful hike along the cliffs above the river Lot and visit a Chateau if we wish.
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We will stay three nights in the farmhouse of Richard and Helen above the Cele valley and then a subsequent two nights in an Auberge in the village of St. Cirq Lapopie high above the Lot river. The trip is fully described on our website, with a summary, a dayto-day schedule and a look at the accommodation we use. Alternatively you can download a brochure to read offline.
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Acknowledgements Photographs of Alexandre, Sebastien and Charles are provided with permission from their parents.
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