Nobody warns you about the boring stuff before you set off down the French canals, and the boring stuff is what actually shapes your days. Where do I fill the water tank. Where can I get diesel without lugging cans across a car park. What on earth do I do about the holding tank. After three summers and roughly 2,000 km of French inland cruising on our 12-metre motor cruiser, these three questions still govern more of our planning than the scenery does.
Here is the honest picture, written for someone arriving from the UK, the Netherlands or further afield who is used to a different setup at home.
Diesel: not the forecourt experience you expect
On the British canals you top up at a marina diesel pump and split the bill between propulsion and heating. In France the supply network is thinner and more scattered, and the rules are different.
First, the legal bit, because British boaters arrive with the wrong mental model. In France marked or dyed diesel is not authorised to propel a private pleasure craft, at sea or inland. Forget the UK red-diesel-with-a-declaration arrangement; it does not apply to you here. Pleasure boats fill up with ordinary white road diesel, full duty paid, and that is what the dedicated fuel pontoons sell. The reduced-rate off-road diesel (GNR) is for commercial inland navigation, not for the visitor pottering down to the Med. If a French commercial vessel pays around 0.97 euros a litre for GNR while you are paying nearer 1.45 to 1.55 euros for white diesel, that gap is the duty, and trying to dodge it is how you earn a serious fine from the customs (douanes), who do test fuel.
The bigger practical issue, though, is finding any diesel at all from a dedicated berth.
Real fuel pontoons exist, but they are spread out. You will find proper bunkering at the larger hubs, at major town quays, and at commercial fuel points along the big rivers like the Saone and the Rhone. On the smaller canals you can go a long way without seeing one. The fallback that everyone ends up using is jerry cans and a road fuel station, which is exactly as tedious as it sounds, so we carry four 20-litre cans and a length of hose and treat any actual diesel pontoon as a gift.
The lesson learned the hard way in 2023: do not run a small canal section assuming you will refuel partway. We nearly did, on the Doubs, and ended up coasting into Dole on fumes. Fill up at the big junctions when you can. If your route runs down to the sea, our notes on diesel and bunkering across France cover the coastal side too.
Where the real fuel berths actually are is worth memorising. Saint-Jean-de-Losne, the largest river port in the country, has proper bunkering; so do the big Saone and Rhone commercial quays, the larger marinas at Roanne, Macon and Lyon-confluence, and most of the entry-port yards at either end of a cross-France transit. The further you stray onto a minor canal, the longer the gaps. As a rough planning figure we reckon on a 12-metre cruiser burning 2 to 4 litres an hour at canal revs, which on a 200-litre tank is a comfortable 50-plus hours of motoring, but a slow canal day is six or seven hours, so a week of cruising can still empty the tank between hubs. Carry the cans.
Shore power and the marina extras
Diesel is not the only thing the engine and the galley need. Most halte nautiques and town quays give you a water-and-electricity bollard, but the electricity is often the thing that surprises people: supply is frequently 6 to 16 amps, sometimes metered on the same token as the water, sometimes free with the mooring, and the sockets are the blue CEE 16A type rather than anything British. Carry a CEE adaptor lead and do not count on running a 2 kW heater and a kettle at once on a small village supply, because you will trip the post and annoy the boat next door. On the bigger town quays, an overnight mooring with water and power commonly runs in the region of 10 to 25 euros for a boat our size, more in the smart marinas, free on the simplest village rings with no services at all.
Water: easier, but never assume
Fresh water is far less of a headache than fuel. Most town quays, halte nautiques and marinas have a water point, often the same bollard that gives you shore power, sometimes on a token or a card you buy from the capitainerie or the tourist office.
Two practical warnings from experience. First, fittings vary. Bring an assortment of hose connectors and a universal tap adaptor, because the French standard is not the British one and you will meet at least three different taps in a week. Second, plenty of village moorings advertise water that turns out to be switched off, broken, or seasonal. We never let the tank drop below a third before topping up, and we top up whenever a working point appears even if we do not strictly need it.
Carrying a couple of collapsible 10-litre water carriers solves the worst case, when the only working tap is fifty metres up the towpath. They have saved us more than once.
Pump-out: the awkward truth
This is the one that genuinely catches visiting boaters out, so I will be blunt. Pump-out facilities for black-water holding tanks are scarce on the French waterways. Not rare in the way diesel pontoons are rare. Genuinely, nearly absent on long stretches.
If you come from a system where pump-out stations are routine, recalibrate. France has historically had very few shore facilities for emptying a marine toilet holding tank, and you can cruise for weeks without passing one. The big modern marinas and some of the larger river ports do have them, but you cannot plan a route around finding pump-out every few days, because the points simply are not there.
What people actually do varies. Many cruising barges and canal boats run a generously sized holding tank and only empty it at the rare facility or at a marina with the right kit, which is why a week or even a fortnight on board between empties is common. Others fit a different toilet system entirely. Whatever your setup, the planning rule is the same: assume you are responsible for your own waste between widely spaced facilities, size your capacity accordingly, and never, ever discharge into the canal. That is both illegal and the fastest way to make yourself unpopular with every boater behind you.
The places that reliably have a pump-out (the larger marinas and a handful of big river ports) are the same places worth booking ahead for the rest of the season too, especially if you are weighing up where to leave the boat in the cold months. Our guide to wintering your boat on the French canals explains why a hub town with full facilities beats a pretty village every time, and the holding-tank question is part of that calculation.
How we actually plan it
Before each leg we do a quick three-line check. Water: where is the next reliable point, is the tank above a third. Diesel: where is the next real bunkering hub, do we have can capacity to bridge the gap. Black water: how many days of holding-tank capacity left, where is the next pump-out or marina that can take it.
It sounds fussy. It takes two minutes and it is the difference between a relaxed cruise and an anxious one. The French canals are not short of charm; they are short of infrastructure, and the boats that have the best time are the ones that carry their own slack. For the wider rhythm of life aboard between these chores, our piece on daily life on the French canals fills in the rest.
Carry the cans. Carry the hose adaptors. Size the tank generously. Then forget about all of it and go and enjoy the lock-keeper's vegetable garden.
