Discovery

The Wild Beauty

Saumur is taken as a starting point from which to discuss French identity and to help sketch a portrait of France in the year 2000.

It is aboard a flat-bottomed barge, typically used to transport goods, that we are to sail down the Loire river. Crosswind, the local mariner, tells the story of the river the same way it was told to him by his elders, the same way he is now passing it on to future generations. Today, others too are trying to find answers, laying the foundations for green tourism. Issues of ecology and land-use management are touched on.