Ile Du Martin-Pecheur by Annabel Simms

When you step off the raft onto this particular island on the Marne, less than half an hour away from Paris, you step into the timeless world of the guinguettes.

Guinguettes are so called because le petit blanc, the modest but lively white wine of the Paris region they used to serve, made people giguet (ready to dance a jig). Scores of open-air restaurants serving this wine and its traditional accompaniment, la petite friture (fried whitebait) opened along the banks of the Seine and the Marne in the nineteenth century, attracting the working people of Paris, who continued to go there right up to the second world war. They would spend Sunday afternoons beside the river, eating, drinking and listening to traditional French songs sung to the accordion, until they felt ready to get up and dance. Popular with artists as well as with artisans, the guinguettes evoke the music of Jacques Brel, the films of Marcel Carné and the novels of Georges Simenon, all of whom came under their spell, and they have never entirely disappeared from the affection of Parisians.

In the last ten years or so there has been a revival of the tradition, with the older guinguettes such as Chez Gégène at Joinville now featuring in the guidebooks and the bal musette waltz being taught at dance classes. The guinguette on the Ile du Martin-Pêcheur (Kingfisher Island) dates from 1991 and is less well-known. However, it is already so popular that you will need to book your table and when you get there, you will see why. The few yards separating the island from the mainland make all the difference. As you make the ‘crossing’ (it is ridiculously easy) you are instantly drawn into a sense of happy complicity with your fellow-passengers - you are all escapees from the mainland and the rhythm of everyday life. Seated at long tables outside, people of all ages exchange smiles of enjoyment. Everyone is relaxed, savouring the pleasure of the moment, whether they intend to dance or not.

I have danced there once (a breathless rock and roll) but the first time I went, the service was so slow that we had to leave without dancing, to catch the midnight train back to Paris. We were overtaken on the towpath by the young couple from the next table, who insisted on giving all four of us a lift back to Paris in their tiny car, with two of us illegally perched on our partners’ knees. It was their first visit too, and we all agreed that we would be going back.