TUESDAY 8 JULY
After six days back in the UK we returned to the boat on
Monday evening. Well, the plan was for six days but it ended up as five as we
missed a connecting flight from Frankfurt to Birmingham on the way out. The
delay was caused by the weather – I’ve heard of wind, rain, snow and ice
affecting flights but never the heat! Fortunately, we were put up in Frankfurt
and had a pleasant evening there. Also, our rebooking was for an early morning
flight, so we didn’t miss many hours back at home. Even though it was a pretty
full on few days we had a great time catching up with our Flecknoe friends. We did
feel knackered by the time we arrived back on board but knew it was self-inflicted
through over-celebrating and too many late nights.
Tuesday was spent in the port at Kembs getting the boat ready for travelling down
the Rhine and doing some shopping whilst we still had the car. We also spent
quite a bit of time planning our cruising until August. The cruising bit was
easy, the time was taken up working out what to do with the car as we knew we didn’t
want to keep it with us while we cruised, so most of the time was spent pouring
over train and bus timetables.
WEDNESDAY 9 JULY
I awoke at 3.30am on Wednesday and couldn’t go back to sleep
as it was going to be our first day on the Rhine and I always get a little
nervous before our first trip somewhere new that has very large locks. We left our
mooring for the last week and headed for the locks that drop
boats onto the river. As the three km cut to get there was weedy, we pulled up outside
the locks to make sure the prop was clear before radioing for a lock. Once the
job was done I got on the radio and was told to use the smaller of the two
locks. We were then told another boat would be joining us and it turned out to
be a Brit with Finnish residency who travels the waterways doing boat repairs. Soon
after leaving the lock we passed our first big boat, a 183-metre container
carrier.
When we reached the first big lock a commercial came up
behind us, so we had to wait for him to enter first. The Brit/Finn had arrived
before us and had already been told to wait for the commercial which he did but
as all waiting moorings are strictly for use by commercials only, he had to hover out
of the way. Once he was called into the lock we went in and moored
behind him.
For some reason the gates didn’t start to close but we could
hear an animated radio conversation in German between the éclusier and one of
the boats. We can only hear the éclusier’s side of a radio conversation and
couldn’t really understand a word let alone know which boat was involved. After
a while the Brit/Finn started shouting in German to the commercial and then 10
minutes or so later the éclusier came down from his control tower to see the
Brit/Finn and that’s when a real argument started. You can probably see them
remonstrating in the picture above. In the end we guessed that the éclusier wasn’t
happy that his boat was far enough away from the commercial, so we slipped over
to the other side behind the big boat, The Brit/Finn finally realised that the
éclusier wouldn’t operate the lock until his boat was moved so he reluctantly reversed
back.
For the first part of the journey we passed busy quays with boats
loading and unloading their cargoes and the remainder was through the open
countryside of the Rhine plains.
At one particular quay we saw a 135-metre boat that had
nearly finished being filled with grain and the process had filled the air with
fine dust. This included the three black BMWs on the back which looked like
they were white. We were about five kilometres from the next lock when we saw a
boat reversing in the far distance behind us and soon realised it was the grain
boat. He must have reversed at least four kilometres and was still overhauling
us rapidly. Two women and a guy were
busy hosing it and the cars down. He spun around near the lock where the
waterway was wider, and we shared the lock with him and as he was longer than
the one at the ‘argument’ lock we tied up on the opposite side, but as there was no ‘Mr Angry’, no
one seemed to mind this time. Here is the grain boat looking nice and clean (and the three cars) as we left Fessenheim lock.
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| Leaving one of the locks |
Strictly speaking we weren’t on the Rhine but the Grand Canal d’Alsace; we wouldn’t be joining the Rhine until we were further downstream. The canal was opened in 1959 and was built with two main purposes: to accommodate hydroelectric power plants at every lock and to allow larger boats to reach Basel. All locks on the canal are in pairs, both 185 metres long but with one of the pair being 24 metres wide and the other narrower, at 12 metres. The canal is at its widest above the power plants and the locks hence why the grain boat had reversed back before it could spin around. The water in the canal is essentially the Rhine river and the original river runs alongside but with much depleted water levels.
When we left the third lock a Rhine river cruiser was
waiting to come in on its journey from Amsterdam to Basel and we passed two
more that were moored waiting for their passengers to return from day trips
that no doubt included wine tasting.
The grand canal finishes at that lock and the waterway
becomes the canalised Rhine which we will follow down to Strasbourg with its
even larger locks. But before we do that, we wanted to take a detour along the canal
de Colmar to the town of the same name.
I mentioned earlier about getting nervous on new waterways
and that one of the reasons was not knowing what the large locks were going to
be like, another reason is communication. Using a radio is fine but whether or
not I understand responses I get, especially if they’re in German, is another
matter. To make things worse, the éclusiers don’t always respond to calls especially
if the operation is going to be normal and they don’t want to tell us to wait
for other boats etc. Calling the lock to take us onto the canal de Colmar was
one of those instances where we didn’t get a response but as the lock was the smaller size that we're used to and was open
we went straight in. An extremely friendly éclusier came to greet us and as
well as telling us about the canal he was very interested in the boat and asked
to take pictures and videos of us passing through the lock. The lock gates were
quite unusual as they had a sliding door at each end.
We’d made good progress on the grand canal as we were going with the flow which is controlled to drive the hydroelectric power plants. Ignoring the locks we travelled at 10 kph which is very fast for us but nothing like as fast as the commercials which means we have to ride their wakes as they pass us. It was good to be back on a canal though as all of a sudden we were in a world of tranquillity and peace.
We moored for the day just outside a place called Kunheim and the only sounds we could hear were birds and a tractor spraying a field of kale. Although we’d heard golden orioles this year, we hadn’t seen any but we were fortunate to see the glorious bright yellow and black of the males in the trees on the opposite side of the cut.
On Wednesday we cruised 47.5 km, down five locks, saw two
private boats but lost count of the number of commercials.
THURSDAY 10 JULY
When Karen went for her early morning run she saw a large
swan family. Having said the other day that it was unusual to see seven cygnets
surviving more than a week or two, the family she saw still had ten alive.
Over the last few weeks I’ve finished repainting all the
blue panels on the roof and whilst Karen was on her run I started preparing to
repaint the burgundy around those blue panels. On her return we set off for
Colmar which is actually along three different canals.
We’d taken the canal de Neuf-Brisach off the Rhine on
Wednesday and moored for the night soon after joining it (bottom right on the
map). This canal joins the Rhine with the canal du Rhône au Rhin (the straight
canal running vertically). This canal used to join Mulhouse to
Strasbourg but now only a couple of sections remain navigable. After a few
kilometres the canal de Colmar branches off to the left and runs 13 kilometres
to the port at Colmar. Some people had told us that the journey is generally
dead straight across the Rhine flood plain giving us the feeling that it would
be a boring journey. Fortunately, we found it to the contrary and really
enjoyed the cruise with its many small bridges and aqueducts.
Once we were heading west towards Colmar we had great views
of the Vosges mountains and enjoyed picking out hilltop castles that we’d
visited a couple of years ago when cruising through that area. As usual, phone
photos didn’t do the views justice.
Just before we crossed the l’Ill, which is one of the rivers
that runs through Strasbourg, we stopped for lunch at a handy mooring. There
was a guy sunbathing on the side and we found his behaviour very strange. He
was lying half on the walkway we had to use to get off the boat and he didn’t
move or acknowledge us as we got up. In fact he never even gave us a glance while
we were there as he seemed so engrossed in the book he was reading. He can just be made out at the end of the far walkway.
After casting off we went straight into the last lock and
while we were waiting for it to set an éclusier came over to chat to us and ask
if he could take pictures. Having thought that we would be dropping down the
lock I was rather surprised to see it emptying onto our side so I checked with
the éclusier, and he told me we were going montant not avalant. I still can’t
get my head around that we were going down the Rhine valley but had to go up in
a lock. He also told me it was only 40cm deep and as we hadn’t set the boat up
for ascending locks, Karen was rather naughty and just tied up to the lock
ladder. We felt quite safe as it was such a shallow rise. We did feel rather
guilty especially when the éclusier carried on watching and taking even more
photographs but the way Karen positioned herself he either didn’t notice or didn’t
care.
As we came out of the lock we crossed over the l’Ill which
fortunately was quite benign as it had very little flow on it, although it
would be tricky in times of prolonged rain.
The canal began to get quite weedy towards the end and
consequently the port didn’t look particularly inviting by the time we reached
it. We’d picked up quite a bit of weed which made manoeuvring somewhat
difficult once we’d found a spot to moor but at least we didn’t hit any boats.
The port was next to a large camper van park that was busy
with all sorts of nationalities, reinforcing what a touristy town Colmar is. The
port itself was secure and also had its own area for campervans. We were
disappointed that it didn’t look very well kept considering the 39€ a night
charge, e.g. the garden areas didn’t look cared for. The port office had a
picture showing the place when it used to be a commercial port so I tried to
take a picture from a similar spot. We noticed one of the two dockside cranes had been preserved.
Rather than doing any sightseeing we did our normal thing
when visiting a town, pop into the tourist office to find walking trails and
then retire to a bar to discuss sightseeing plans for the following day. Colmar
was, as expected, thronged with tourists. Although we weren’t really
sightseeing we took a few pictures on the way home and fortunately managed to
get some with only a few people in them.
This is the House of Heads built in 1605 as a wine trading house. If you look closely there are are 105 heads and masks dotted around the façade.
Opposite our bar were many half-timbered houses, some with balconies, which looked to be typical of the town.
Karen was the first to spot this building with two corbelled towers.
On Thursday we cruised 18.5 km, down one lock, up another lock and saw one boat on the move, who were Americans heading for Colmar too.
FRIDAY 11 JULY
We made an early start to do our sightseeing trip around
Colmar in order to avoid the worst of the crowds and the heat. Most of the time
was spent in the old town and an area called Little Venice. Yes, yet another
town with an area called Little Venice. Here are some of the sights and you’ll
probably notice how early we set out by the lack of people in many of them.
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| Covered market next to la Lauch, the main waterway in town |
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| A trading house built in 1480 |
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| Another of the town’s waterways |
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| These were originally fishmongers’ houses |
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| Atypical (for Colmar) building built in 1608 with a wonderful courtyard reminiscent of many we’ve seen in Italy |
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| Getting the tourist trip boats ready |
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| One of the trip boat stops |
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| Starting to get touristy |
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| Outside the cathedral... |
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| ...and inside |
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| We couldn't find out what this building next to the tourist office was |
In the afternoon we left the port and headed down to the end of the canal to be in a good position to make a start on the Rhine over the weekend. Halfway back, an alarm started sounding and we immediately stopped the engine. I went into the engine bay and found one of the fan belts had disintegrated. This was only the second time that belt had gone in the nine years since we had the boat built so with nearly 5,000 hours on the clock, I didn’t feel that was too bad.
Having stopped the engine on a waterway with a flow we were
soon drifting backwards so there was nothing for it but to use our anchor which
was the first time we’d used it in anger. Fortunately, it worked quickly and
held us still while I replaced the belt. I’d forgotten that both belts have to
be removed to replace the one that had gone so the job took a lot longer than
anticipated. It was made extra hard because the engine was very hot so I kept
burning myself on it. It also didn’t help that the sun was beating down too.
Once I’d finished, cleared up and had a shower it was time to remove the anchor
which was amazingly simple. The only issue was that it and the chain had
collected a lot of weed and clay. We had a simple solution: as I hauled the
anchor in, Karen had the mucky job of removing the weed and clay as the chain
came up. With the delay we didn’t moor up at Kunheim, where we’d stopped on the
way to Colmar, until 7.30pm – very late for us.
On Friday we cruised 18.5 km, down one lock, up another lock
and saw no boats on the move.
1 comment:
Super kbotos musf go to Colmar looks lovely..thanks for the news
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