A river cruise from Bordeaux with cycling and wine tasting

It’s not possible to cruise right now, but it soon will be, and European river cruising is likely to make a comeback first. Here’s why a Bordeaux river cruise is perfect for wine lovers and active travellers, even reluctant ones

“Gentle inclines,” cruise director Stuart said confidently when I asked if there were any hills on the guided bike ride. He followed up with the reassuring,”It’s along the river so it’s going to be level”.

I’ve been wary of lycra-clad guides ever since an unforgettable – for all the wrong reasons – cycle tour along the Danube river. That route was all flat, my interlocutor had said, conveniently forgetting to mention the small mountain we had to negotiate. Even before we got to it, there seemed a problem with my bike (surely not me?) as the gap between myself and the rest of the pack grew wider and wider.

Yet here I was, steeling myself for another humiliation because I had a feeling that after a few days of food and wine on this river cruise in southwest France, enforced exercise would be vital. As our 144-passenger river cruise ship AmaDolce had a fleet of bikes on board for guests to use independently or on guided tours, cycling was the obvious way to burn a few extra calories.

I was cruising the Garonne, Gironde and Dordogne – an amalgam of rivers dubbed ‘Bordeaux’ by my hosts APT after the city in which the cruise starts, ends and spends several nights. This is because AmaDolce isn’t able to navigate far along any of them. By the end of day two, when we were back in Bordeaux after a couple of hours sailing to Cadillac and back, I had twigged that cruising was the one thing we wouldn’t be doing much of. 

That was fine. Like my cruise mates, most of them retired Brits and Aussies, I was there to learn about wine production in the home of French viticulture.

Who was I kidding? We were there because the itinerary promised wine tasting every day. In the Sauternes, the Medoc and St Emilion, all very prestigious names. At each chateau (as they call wineries in these parts) we admired the grapes on the vines and the giant vats the wine was made in – that seemed only polite. But in truth we were really after quaffing a few glasses of the rather excellent local grand crus. After a fleeting sniff, of course, just so we looked like experts.