"The idea is to test": an eco-responsible barge wants to become a living space on the canal in Reims

With its 35 m length, the barge "Cabourg" is moored along the Boulevard du Docteur-Henri-Henrot, in Reims ( Marne ). Since last summer, this unusual place has welcomed volunteers from all over the world all year round under the leadership of a participatory project. An island of life where encounters are daily. On board, Captain Louis Sureau is delighted by this excitement: "The volunteers stay from two weeks to a month and put into practice the projects that interest them. One of them suggested filtering the canal water to use it as drinking water and to cool the barge in the summer."

An engineer by training, Louis Sureau has owned the barge since 2024. And he has plenty of plans to revive the canal, where manned barges have been banned since May 2024 and the start of work on the banks of Reims. The thirty-year-old, a native of the city of coronations, had the opportunity to acquire this boat and turn it into a unique laboratory and cultural space.

"The idea is to experiment, without repeating it. Whether it's the artist residency last spring, the yoga workshops, or the cooking classes. The strength of the barge is that it easily brings people together. Everyone wants to come aboard," emphasizes the captain.

Ecology is at the heart of the projects being developed. Various alternative energy sources are being tested, such as vertical wind turbines and a heat pump using canal water to heat the boat. Louis Sureau hopes to implement these solutions if his project, "the Reims barge," is selected as part of the Voies Navigables de France (VNF) call for projects related to the redevelopment of the Reims riverbanks.

This call for projects, launched in partnership with the City of Reims, plans to install two barges to host bar and restaurant activities. With this in mind, Louis Sureau hopes to operate a second barge, which will host a bar and restaurant area under the name "la péniche Reims." "It will be a sort of floating cultural bistro. It's a project that's viable. In Troyes ( Aube ), for example, it's working very well," he explains.

By September, he should know whether his project has been accepted by VNF and the City of Reims. The next step: organizing a "Quai d'un soir" festival, with music and a refreshment bar, to attract a new audience to discover the barge's cultural activities. "We would like to move the barge to Port Colbert to organize this event in June 2026," envisions the thirty-year-old.

For the time being, the development work on the banks of Reims continues . The nautical stopover was already delivered last June and the rest should be inaugurated in 2026. A development imagined and made possible thanks to the destruction of the Charles-de-Gaulle bridge, ardently defended by the mayor of Reims in the face of opposition mobilized even in the administrative courts.