Six of the best places in France for paddleboarding, kayaking and canoeing
Coast hugging, Bonifacio, Corsica
When I first visited Corsica, I hiked down the spine of the Corsican mountains, barely seeing the sea except for glimpses from a bird’s eye perspective. This time, as I hugged the coastline, dipping in and out of sea caves, I felt as though I was winding through the arteries of Corsica. This route starts from Piantarella, just east of Bonifacio on the southern tip of the island. It’s a sheltered lagoon, a deceptive idyll before you head out into open water, fringed by the northernmost islets of the seabird-heavy Lavezzi Islands. As you paddle west along the coast, the cliffs get higher and the coast is so haphazardly splintered that it looks as though someone has taken a sledgehammer to it. At the end of the route, just before Bonifacio, is an extraordinary cave, the Grotte de Saint-Antoine, with an almost perfect circle carved into the roof and a tiny sliver of sand the colour of shortbread at the back of it. Allow for half a day at least: this route is the better part of nine miles there and back.
A Cheda, just outside Bonifacio, has a garden full of palms and wall creepers and double rooms from €150
The calanques of Cassis, Côte d’Azur
The Calanques are deservedly popular but you can still find a peaceful inlet if you arrive by sea. Photograph: alxpin/Getty Images
A loop route from Cassis on the Côte d’Azur goes past some of the prettiest scenery I’ve ever paddled. The Calanques national park, just east of Marseille, is a 12-mile stretch of limestone cliffs interspersed with steep, rocky inlets where the turquoise water glows as though it comes from a glacier rather than the Mediterranean. It’s deservedly popular, so much so that tourist numbers on the hiking trails which skirt the calanques have been restricted, but arriving by sea you can still find a peaceful inlet to yourself. Tunnel-like caves dart in and out of the cliff like warrens made by burrowing rodents. Up above, climbers tackle vertiginous ascents on limestone made from millions of years of compressed fish bones and shells.
The Best Western in Cassis is good value and couldn’t be better located, a two-minute walk from the sea, from €90. High-speed trains run from Paris to Marseille, a 40-minute drive or 20-minute train ride from Cassis
Alpine paddling, Annecy, Haute-Savoie
The waters of Lake Annecy are among the cleanest in Europe. Photograph: Hemis/Alamy
There’s a reason why Annecy had France’s first paddleboard club: this lake, 26 miles south of Geneva, was made to be paddled and kayaked. It’s also great for beginners, being Europe’s cleanest lake, so falling in is less of a worry – if you’re paddling during the summer. Every January it’s home to the coldest paddleboard race in the world, the GlaGla Race, with distances of either four or 8½ miles across water that hovers barely above freezing. It’s like an icy game of “the floor is lava”, and lots of competitors do it in fancy dress. To paddle Annecy in more clement conditions, when the mountains are green and paragliders pepper the skies, I recommend launching from Doussard on the southern end of the lake, where it’s much quieter.
Hôtel Allobroges serves a slap-up breakfast buffet, from €80 room only, €92 B&B. Annecy is well served by buses and trains from Geneva or Paris
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The market gardens of Amiens, Hauts-de-France
The hortillonnages were home to market gardens which supplied the town of Amiens with fruit and veg. Photograph: Hemis/Alamy
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The town of Amiens is famous for its hortillonnages, a network of small, cultivated islets that were home to market gardens, supplying the town with fresh fruit and veg. Today the hortillonnages could put the Chelsea flower show to shame with their waterside displays. This paddle makes a convoluted loop with many twists and turns, and begins from the Amiens suburb of Rivery. The waterways that run through the hortillonnages might be muddy rivers, tiny streams barely wide enough to fit a paddle, or wide ponds. Every turn feels like a discovery, as you push through the curtain-like fronds of weeping willow to discover a pair of brightly painted flowerpot men at the end of someone’s garden, or a suspicious-looking sheep peering out through the brambles. There are plenty of restaurants too, and Ôjardin, right on the water, hires punt-style rowing boats. As you paddle towards the River Somme, on increasingly widening waterways, the spire of the largest cathedral in France, Notre-Dame d’Amiens, is clearly visible on the horizon.
Family-run guesthouse Une Maison en Ville offers rooms in a 19th-century townhouse. Amiens is around 1hr 20min by train from Lille and Paris
Go with the flow in Lyon
Saint-Rambert-l’Île-Barbe in the Saône. Photograph: Joerg Hackemann/Alamy
Landlocked Lyon is nowhere near the sea, but it has some fantastic paddling. Two rivers converge at La Confluence in the city centre, the Rhône and the Saône. The Rhône is one of the largest rivers in the country and sees a lot more boat traffic. It’s possible to paddle on stretches of the river further north, but since there are so many dams on the Rhône, I prefer paddling on the Saône, particularly the area just north of the city centre, between Rochetaillée-sur-Saône and Île Barbe, an island with a Benedictine abbey. The first abbey on this island was built in the fifth century. Peniche (barge) bars and restaurants on the Rhône are great for a post-paddle pint.
Villa 216 has two guest rooms in a manor house dating from 1890. TGV trains from Paris Gare de Lyon take under two hours
To the lighthouse, Plouguerneau, Brittany
Île Vierge, Plouguerneau. Photograph: Hemis/Alamy
Brittany’s rugged scenery and fierce Celtic pride remind me of Cornwall, my home. The weather changes every five minutes – frustrating at times, as no sooner have you dried off than it tips it down again. The sea off the exposed north-west coast is tempestuous and always changing, waves crashing on cracked black rocks that look like frostbitten knuckles alongside icing sugar sand. A five-mile loop paddle from Lilia, in the commune of Plouguerneau, takes you out to Île Vierge and the tallest lighthouse in Europe. The opaline interior looks like marble from an architectural design magazine, but actually it’s made from sheep’s bones, left over from when the former residents of the island, a group of monks, tried unsuccessfully to keep a flock here. When seas are calm, this is an easy enough paddle for novices.
Norzh Ecogîte is a wooden lodge that looks like it was built from the spoils of the sea, from €65. Plouguerneau is a 50-minute drive from the ferry terminal at Roscoff
Anna Richards is the author of Paddling France (Bradt Travel Guides £19.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.