A fishing boat may not be the obvious craft for touring the vineyards of France but Paul and Sally Weston have cruised their beloved Mitch from Portland to the Med and back via Europe’s finest wine makers
OurMitchell 31’s natural habitat is the world of tides and shoals, of sharp south westerlies and steep choppy seas. But from May 2019 until August 2021, Mitch’s milieu was one of rivers and canals and the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean.
It is truly astonishing, in retrospect, that we could travel in our very ordinary boat, almost without formalities and at minimal cost, from Portland to Brittany, down to Biscay, through the rural heart of southern France to the Mediterranean and back. For this article, though, I want to focus on Mitch’s progress through the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlées (AOC), the tightly controlled regions that designate and define all the great wines of France.
The pride which the French take in their wine and the care with which it is made left a lasting impression on us and I would highly recommend other MBY readers take the opportunity to visit them by boat.
In the canals and rivers, we felt freer than we did cruising at sea. In the morning, we would cast off our lines, put the engine in gear and set off with the day’s itinerary completely unplanned, safe in the knowledge that the for taking angling parties out to sea for rounding of every bend would reveal some new delight, and that we would find a secure mooring against the bank when we wanted to stop. Trav elling slowly along inland waterways gives a very intimate view of the country and towns through which you pass but as the scene is viewed from the boat, your own familiar and secure world, you feel separate from life ashore. This is particularly so when travelling through some great, bustling city, with its people intent on their daily lives, oblivious to you and the boat a few feet away.
On the face of it, Mitch, a 1990 Mitchell 31 Sea Angler we have owned for more than 20 years, was not much of a cruising boat, designed as it was the day. However, Mitch was the boat we had and on the grounds that “perfection is the enemy of progress”, we decided to go cruising in it. To the Mediterranean.
However, before we set off, there were difficulties to overcome. Firstly, Mitch was lying completely derelict in the garden, and secondly, her ac
