How I grew to love the stinky Seine (without swimming in it)

No wonder swimming in the Seine has been illegal for 100 years. For the Olympics and Paralympics, which will have at least three major swimming events, the city spent €1.4 million cleaning up the river, most of it on a new stormwater cistern under Gare de Austerlitz railway station, a concrete tank, the size of 20 Olympic swimming pools, supported by pylons about 80 metres into the ground.

The boast is that people will be able to swim at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

But it seems plans have gone awry.

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President Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo promised earlier this year that they would swim in the Seine before the Olympics. It’s possible Macron called an election to avoid the task.

Parisians with safety and health concerns about the river’s central place in the Games competitions have planned a demonstration when they do. They’re calling it, “I Sh-t in the Seine”. In typical iconoclastic fashion, Parisians have threatened to defecate in the river as Macron and Hildegard stroke by.

Perhaps this is an indication of how beloved the river is for Parisians. It doesn’t only belong to them, though – the Seine stretches 777 kilometres, from Burgundy through Paris out to the sea in Normandy.

River cruises serenely sail its length, and this is the best way to see it. The last cruise I took went as far as Normandy, where the river meets the English Channel near Honfleur. There is an astonishing number of iconic landmarks that can be accessed from the river, including the Palace of Versailles, Empress Josephine’s Chateau Malmaison, Monet’s Garden at Giverny, Rouen Cathedral, Mont Saint Michel and the Normandy D-Day beaches. There’s even a mini Statue of Liberty on an island near Quay Andre Citroen in Paris.

Living in Paris, as I did for a two-year period in the 1990s, I grew to love the Seine. At first, it was just a river I crossed to get from the Left Bank to the Right. But later I grew to see it as a great artery that pumped life into the land-locked city, and along its waterways to the sea, teeming with activity, from barges to Bateaux Mouches carrying smartphone-snapping tourists. I was always envious of those who lived on it, not only in apartments overlooking the water but in houseboats docked along the river’s length.

In summer, its banks become beaches with Parisians lolling on deckchairs of temporary “plages”.

This summer, it would be shame if the pong drove them away.