Wittring (made it in record time)

TUESDAY 27 AUGUST

Unlike a couple of days previously when I had to replace an engine hose before leaving, there were no pressing jobs to do on the boat, so I set off straight after breakfast.  As I only had 28 kilometres and seven locks to go to reach Wittring I thought I would break the back of the journey.  The hot weather was forecast to continue so that was another good reason to leave early.  As with many French canals there are very few recognised mooring spots for pleasure boats, i.e. those equipped with bollards or mooring rings and sometimes services such as water and electricity.  This doesn’t usually bother us as we’re quite happy staying out in the sticks and away from people.  

I had toyed with the idea the previous evening of continuing down one more lock and stopping just before a hamlet called Neuweyerhoff at one of the recognised moorings.  Karen and I had stopped there before and found it was rather a good site for butterflying.  When I went past it, soon after setting off, I was rather glad I hadn’t carried on as there were tents and camper vans parked up.  Judging by the amount of fishing rods lined up along the whole length of the quay, they must have all be keen fishermen.  It would have been interesting getting them to move if I'd had wanted to tie up.

Passing the busy mooring

Mentioning butterflies, it seems that this part of France is faring much better than the UK this year.  Generally, numbers have been low in the UK and some common garden species such as the Small Tortoiseshell seem to be remarkably down on numbers. On the other hand I would say this is the best year we’ve seen in France and some locksides are almost swarming with different species including many fritillaries and hairstreaks.

The next lock was at a place called Harskirchen which, like most place names in the area, sounds very Germanic. There was actually a lock at either end of the town with a port between them. 

Part of the port at Harskirchen

The second lock at Harskirchen

The next sign of habitation was a further ten kilometres downstream at a town called Sarralbe and there was a sudden change in the landscape.  Rather than the lakes and forests of the previous two days I was now in flattish and open countryside.

Whilst cruising along this stretch I was struggling to remember what Sarralbe was like.  I’m usually pretty good at recalling places and their surroundings but, even though we’d stopped there for a couple of nights previously, I just could not bring a memory of it back.  Well, that’s not quite true as I knew we’d been rather smitten with a pair of storks nesting on top of the mairie.  Their names were Maurice and Mélodie and as storks they mate for life and return to their same nest every year.  There is a year-round webcam focussed on the nest and we often dip in and out to see how they’re doing.  But even this memory wouldn’t bring back a vision of the town mooring.  Click here for alink to the webcam if you’re interested. 

As I dropped down the second of the two locks in Sarralbe everything came flooding back and I remembered that around the corner there was a long mooring by a small park and I was soon moored up.  I decided to stop for a while to take on water, use the recycling point and then have lunch.

The mooring at Sarralbe

I’d made good progress and only had about ten kilometres left before reaching Wittring so decided to carry on during the afternoon.  The next lock was near a place called Herbitzheim and the converted lock cottage and canal service office is probably the most photographed on this canal.  The people living there are clearly very patriotic and proud of their heritage judging by some of the artefacts displayed interspersed with a fair amount of canal memorabilia.  

A little further on I passed a pill box on the famous Maginot line, a defence line built after WWI to prevent any further invasions from Germany.

Approaching Wittring I passed only the second boat of the day; a rather strange looking craft called Mississippi:

Wittring ahead

Rather than going into the dry dock first, Alistair had decided to wait for me so we could go in together and had agreed with VNF that they would open it for us on Thursday.  The dry dock was just before the lock in Wittring but as the best mooring spot was below the lock I decided to go down it and spend Wednesday there.  Regular readers will know that every so often we have to call out VNF when a lock becomes inoperable. I’d been very fortunate since leaving Port Sainte-Marie at the weekend and had not had any reason to make a phone call. Ironically when the Wittring lock had emptied, the gates wouldn’t open so I was stuck at the bottom.  As I knew Alistair was moored below the lock, I called him and he came up to try Karen’s trick of jumping on the gates but to no avail.  He called VNF from the lockside interphone and after a while an éclusier arrived to sort things out and get me on my way.

Alistair jumping on the gates

Wittring is a very quiet place and not a lot to it other than the port, the dry dock, a disproportionally large church and a large and very popular restaurant called Victoria.

Passing the port to moor in front of the restaurant

The original plan had been that Karen and Buddy would have been with me but as you know things have changed.  It would have been problematic living on the boat in the dry dock as it wouldn’t have been possible to get Buddy on and off as he hadn’t learnt to use a ladder.  Because of this we’d taken an Airbnb for four weeks in the centre of the village.  The news about Buddy had come too late for us to get a refund on the place so I decided to use it anyway.  It would have its plus sides too, not least was that it had air conditioning and I could have decent showers every day.

Once through the lock I moored up next to Alistair’s boat and we spent a happy hour or two catching up over some beers.  We called a halt before it got too late so I could find the Airbnb and settle in.  It was very close by, just the other side of the restaurant and in front of the church.

It had taken me two and a half days to get to Wittring from where I started at Port Sainte Maire, a journey of 64km and 26 locks.  When Karen and I did the journey it had taken a leisurely 11 days but we were sightseeing and going for walks on the way.

It looks like it’s going to be hot in Wittring for the next few days at least so I was looking forward to a day of rest on Wednesday before going into the dry dock and starting work in earnest.

On Tuesday I cruised 28 kilometres down seven locks and saw two boats, both private.

WEDNESDAY 28 AUGUST

I had nothing pressing to do first thing so took a walk up the hill to the east of Wittring.  First, I had to get across the canal de la Sarre at the lock then a road bridge took me over the river Sarre.  The canal eventually joins the river further north but at this point it isn’t navigable.

The river Sarre

A footpath leads up the hill via a small chapel that sits in woodland about a third of the way up.  At the start of the footpath stands a small memorial from the villagers of Wittring for being liberated during WWII:

When I reached the chapel, I had a good view over Wittring and the Sarre valley and, although the river itself is hidden by the trees, the canal is clearly visible in both directions:

Looking down on Wittring

The large building in the centre of the picture next to the canal is the restaurant in front of which Chalkhill Blue can just be seen.  My Airbnb is between the restaurant and the church so I get the full effect of the church clock chimes, although it is said that they are so loud they can be heard by everyone who lives there.  Church clock chimes are one of things we love about France.  I know English church clocks can chime too but it doesn’t seem to be as many as in France where they can be heard in nearly every village.  The chimes in Wittring are every 15 minutes which is pretty normal, but they do go through the night which is not generally the case.

Walking further on past the chapel to the top of the hill I came across a lovely wildflower meadow that was teeming with butterflies.  Even though it was only mid-morning it was already too hot for them to settle for any period of time, but I managed to get a couple of shots.  This picture is of a Small Heath which is a butterfly that’s also common in the UK:

Small Heath

The following picture is of a Pale Clouded Yellow that occasionally migrates across to England.  In this picture it looks more like the more common Clouded Yellow but that’s because the sun is shining through it giving it that bright custard yellow appearance rather than its true pale lemon yellow.

Pale Clouded Yellow

I came back down the hill by a different route and once at the bottom I came across another of the pill boxes that sat on the Maginot line.

The old and the new

After lunch we breasted up our boats and went up the lock so we could moor outside the dry dock as VNF were getting it ready for us at 8.00am on Thursday.

Waiting for the lock to open

Steel piling is being delivered to the yard next to the dry dock and four or five lorries arrive from the Czech Republic each day to be unloaded.  It’s not an easy place for a foreign lorry driver to find and Alistair told me that on more than one occasion he’s had to explain where to go to drivers who appeared lost.  They don’t seem to dare to drive through the narrow street in the village so sit on the canal bridge checking their instructions. Once we’d moored up we joined a group of guys who seemed to have something to do with the crane that was unloading the lorries.  Alistair’s French and German is better than mine and his German must be better than his French as the guys immediately switched from French to German.  We’ve noticed this strange switching of languages at border areas before and I suppose it’s quite natural to be brought up fluently in two languages.  

We popped into the dry dock to have a last look around and check the poles that had been placed to show us where to position the boats.  We also put in some mooring pins along the sides to help us hold position as the water drains out.

Ready for us to go in

The ‘2024 Mosella’ painted at the end was done by the guy who had his péniche called Mosella in for blacking over the last couple of weeks.  The name Mosella rang a bell with me and when Alistair told me that his name was Thilo I realised that Karen and I already knew him.  We’d met him when we were in Saarbrücken and he even showed us around his 38-metre péniche that he was in the middle of converting from a working boat at the time.  

We were having a beer to cool down before going our separate ways when yet another lorry appeared and was clearly lost as he turned into the restaurant car park.  We went over to help him and found the driver was a Russian driving a Polish lorry with yet more steel piling from the Czech Republic. He knew no German, French or English, but mind you we didn’t know any Russian either.   With the help of Google translate we convinced him that he should follow us down to where he would need to park by the growing piles of piling and wait until the crane people arrived in the morning.

On Wednesday I cruised 200 metres up one lock and, not surprisingly, passed no boats.

THURSDAY 29 AUGUST

As promised, a couple of VNF guys started filling the dry dock lock at 8am, although why it required two of them I don’t know.  It took about an hour to fill and I was surprised it was quite so long but I suppose it’s large enough to take a couple of 38-metre péniches with plenty of working room around and between them.   

Water starting to come in

Once it was full, one of the VNF éclusiers opened the gate using a good old windlass.  Although they’re a common sight in the UK and every boater has two if not more, they’re hardly ever used over here because most locks are electronic.

Using a windlass to open the gate

Whilst the dock was filling Alistair and I had got our boats in position ready to go in.  We’d measured out the trestles we’d be resting on and worked out we needed to be five metres apart so we tied our boats together with five metres slack.  The aim was to have four people help us position the boats; two on either side, front and back.  With us tied together it would be as if we were one boat and make things easier.

Going in

Four guys came up from the port to take our lines and after a bit of shouting and manoeuvring we believed we were in the right spot and one of the VNF guys opened the drain hole so we would start going down.  The water was so dirty that we couldn’t see the trestles, so we kept using our boat poles to feel for them to make sure we were still on target. 

Nearly empty

As the water drains it runs in a pipe under the canal and then into the river Sarre on the other side.  With such a small bore pipe it was no wonder it took just over three hours to drain.

Drain hole

Once the water was quite shallow, we were able to guide any trapped fish towards the drain hole and the final few I caught in our fishing net to help them on their way.  After a quick lunch we set up the pressure washer and by the time we’d had enough for the day we’d each cleaned a side of our boats.

Before and after the initial clean

I’m not sure where we picked up mussels on our boat but we seemed to have accumulated rather a lot over the last year or so.  Every few months I’ve scraped them off the sides using a kayak paddle but obviously I couldn’t get underneath.

Looks like a bit of work to do on the bottom

Even though it was another hot day approaching the mid-30s we were able to get quite a bit done, helped by the fact that the tall trees at the side of the dock gave us some shade from about 4pm.

Can’t believe I was wearing a white tee shirt!

FRIDAY 30 AUGUST

I broke the back of the pressure washing on Wednesday and for once was glad it was yet another hot day.  Laying under the boat covered in water while clearing the underside was almost a pleasant way to keep cool.  I used Alistair’s car creeper which made the process simpler and less uncomfortable.  By the end of the day I’d finished one side and the underneath and was starting to feel I was making progress.

SATURDAY 31 AUGUST

Most of the morning was spent pressure washing the remaining side and also the rope fenders.  We’ve had the rope side fenders for about 15 years and they were looking very tired with years of lock slime and mud caked into them.

Rejuvenated fenders

Making a start on cleaning the final side

The last job before lunch and starting to put the blacking on was to clean the bottom of the dry dock.  It had got very mucky over the last couple of days and we wanted to get it clear before painting.  Not only that, there were thousands of mussels that needed clearing away otherwise they would start smelling as they went off.

We'd borrowed an industrial pressure washer and fireman’s hoses with a massive water pump.  We put the water pump in the canal and we took turns to alternate between using the hose and the washer to clear the dock.  We had to keep swapping between the hose and the washer because the hose was so bulky and heavy – I’ve now got a lot of respect for firemen.  After lunch I put the first coat of blacking on one side of the boat and Alistair did one side of his too.

Coming on

I'm not looking forward to tomorrow because when I've put a coat on the other side I'll have to get the first coat on the underside which is likely to be a messy job.