Matthew Fort: Cycling the Ancien Canal du Berry

Matthew Fort cycles along the Ancien Canal du Berry. "Built – or réalisé, as the French so elegantly put it – ­between 1808 and 1840, 261km all told, with 97 locks to carry freight (coal, bricks, clay and iron) to and from Montluçon in the south, and to and from Fontblisse by way of V­allon-en-Sully and Saint-Amand-Montrond"
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

A fisherman alongside the Ancien Canal du Berry
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

"When it was there, it was reassuringly broad and placid, its path marked by poplars, chestnuts and oaks"
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

The Ancien Canal du Berry "has a habit of disappearing completely"
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

A bridge over the Ancien Canal
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

On the road in Berry
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

The Canal goes missing again
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

A grocery en route
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

Berry is famous for its goat's cheeses – crottin de Chavignol, Pouligny-Saint-Pierre, Selles-sur-Cher, best washed down with a glass of nameless red wine
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian

"The food was impeccably French, haut bourgeois, country house, of a kind familiar to me from recipe books no longer read, grounded in the ingredients of the region, suave, generous in ­matters of butter and cream..."
Photograph: Marion Poussier/Guardian