Folding Kayaks Forum

i recently bought an early nineties feathercraft k1 and have an idea in my head. i would like to tour the canals in europe and have done a little research into the dutch and irish canals, but my mind is open and i wonder what others think about good places to paddle in europe. i like camping and think it would help my money go farther if i didn't get a hotel very often, and i have done a fair amount of camping in europe but i wonder if it is feasible with a kayak. thanks

Merlin

If I wanted to camp and paddle in canals, I would have checked out Dalsland and Dalsland Kanal in Sweden.
The area is southeast of Oslo in Norway and west of Lake Vänern in Sweden. It's easy to get to and from, for provisions there are never hundreds of kilometers to shops, and surprisingly in some places you will feel rather isolated.

olsen

You might want to search the sites of the companies that run the commercial barge canal trips. I'd looked into those some years ago (the bike and barge ones, specifically, where you have dinner and sleep on the barge and then take bikes and tour the adjacent shore sites during the day). They show their routes and usually have photos of the waterways they traverse. I recall quite a few in the Low Countries, the Burgundian region of France and various Rhine feeder rivers in Germany. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have encorporated kayaks into the tour packages (though I am just suggesting you use them for information on areas to plan your own trips.)

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Hi Merlin,

I'm a little late in catching your post. It is possible to paddle from La Manche (otherwise known as the English Channel) all the way through to the Black Sea (Odessa, Danube etc) via canal. It has certainly been completed by an Aussie; from Oxford in the UK (R.Thames) to the Black Sea in a Mirror dinghy (twelve feet long no cabin) ...! Some of the continental canals are really wide, built for ships etc. I'm not sure how stable the East is these days..

Of course there is always Bonny Scotland and the English Lake District. Of course in the UK, apart from Scotland and N. Ireland, it's quite difficult to get yourself properly isolated.

Tim