Crévic (cupid at play)

WEDNESDAY 4 MAY

With a chance of thunderstorms in the late afternoon we set off in brilliant sunshine at 9.30am to retrace our wake along the embranchement de Nancy.  Having only come down it a couple of days previously there wasn’t a lot to add about the journey other than we were both pleased we'd done it and would highly recommend it as an unexpectedly pleasant and rural canal considering how close to Nancy it is. The only drawback is the fact that it is part of the boucle de Nancy, an 85 km ring of canals and rivers encircling Nancy.  Not that that in itself is a problem it's that the towpath alongside the boucle also provides a well-known and well-made cycle route for the complete circuit.  Consequently, not only are there holidaymakers walking or gently riding their bikes but also serious lycra-clad cyclists who’d probably rather other people weren’t allowed on their cycle path.

One thing that I didn’t mention before was that all the locks have a wildlife home which is a nice idea.  Each lock had a different animal as its design, even the wild cat lock had its wildlife home in a cat.  This one is a dog by the way:

Oh, and one thing that was different about the journey was that this time we passed a boat – a fat boy or widebeam, whichever term you prefer (non-narrowboaters in France call them widebeam narrowboats).  It was owned by a German couple who'd bought it from an English guy who had it shipped to France but never used it and they were hoping to get it down to the south of France through the summer.  Karen took a couple of pictures of its rear as it went past but they were rather unflattering of the German lady driving - she wouldn't have managed in a narrowboat.

Fat boy Charlotte

We moored two locks above Fléville-devant-Nancy a couple of km short of the end of the embranchement.  Other than having a walk during the afternoon, we spent the rest of the day enjoying the sun, the threatened thunderstorm never arriving although it did rain during the night.

On Wednesday we cruised eight km through 16 locks (five up and 11 down).

THURSDAY 5 MAY

We needed to go food shopping as Karen had worked out that we wouldn’t be going anywhere near a supermarket over the next fortnight as the canal becomes very rural once it leaves Nancy.  This meant that after we’d gone down the last bit of the embranchement we would retrace our steps into Nancy where we could moor right alongside an Intermarché.

We set off in lovely sunshine even though cloud cover was forecast for the day.  In fact, we were lucky and had sun all day apart an hour at midday.  We immediately dropped down the last two locks of the embranchement watched by quite a few gongoozlers including a couple of gendarmes.  Karen pointed out that one of them was left-handed because of the position of his gun holster which I thought was really astute although I hoped it’s not the sort of observational skill we would ever need in anger.

Leaving our overnight mooring on Thursday morning

Back at the junction with the canal de la Marne au Rhin (est) we turned left and headed down to the Intermarché.  Karen went to do the shopping and I busied myself, well, I wanted to but Brian from a 24-metre barge seemed keen to talk.  To be fair he was an 82-year-old Aussie who’s lived on his own on the boat for 15 years so was probably keen to converse in English for a while.  He told me that he alternates his moorings every four weeks between the supermarket and the commercial port in Nancy where we’d stopped last week.

Brian’s mooring outside the Intermarché

After a while, Karen rang to say she’d finished the shopping, so I took my leave and went to help her push the trolley to the boat.  After returning the trolley we set off back the way we’d just come but at the junction continued on and triggered the lock just past it.  We had to wait a while as a hire boat was filling up with water in the lock before coming down.  As we went through the lock we filled up with water too and had just about finished when another hire boat came along.  We’d heard that there are a few hire boat bases on the way to Strasbourg because the canal goes through some pretty Alsatian countryside, there are very few locks and also there’s the attraction of an inclined plane.  Clearly, we’re probably going to be seeing quite a bit of traffic from here on in.

We moored for lunch just above the lock during which Karen remembered that while shopping she’d taken a photo of a table and chairs that she’d thought would be ideal to replace the camping ones we have on the boat.  When I saw the picture, I immediately agreed and we ummed and aahed about whether to walk back two kilometres with our sack barrow to get a set or turn the boat around and go back again.  In the end we opted to take the boat.

After turning around again we went back down the lock, past the junction with the embranchement and were soon at the supermarket.  As we moored up we explained to Brian what we were doing as he’d come over looking very puzzled about us turning up again, and went to get the table and chairs.  Sadly, we could only see the display set, all the boxes contained other items of garden furniture.  I went to customer services to find out if they had any in stock.  A guy, who turned out to be the manager, checked the computer and said they had three so made a quick phone call to get someone to bring us one.  The computer stock levels were wrong, and they couldn’t find any so I asked if we could take the display set.  Not only did he say we could, he also gave them a good clean and then knocked 15% off the asking price!  Better still was that we didn’t have any plastic packaging and a large cardboard box to dispose of.

Our new table and chairs

Once we’d made our way back yet again, we tied up above the lock once more and sat outside to christen our new furniture.  We’d had the washing machine on during our trip to the supermarket and while I was hanging the washing out later a couple stopped to have a chat.  I’m not sure how it happened but somehow, during the conversation, I lost Karen’s favourite tee shirt.  I spent a long time fishing for it and as the water wasn’t particularly clear for a change I couldn’t find it.  It didn’t help when I suggested she now has the chance to choose a new favourite.

Moored above the lock at Laneuveille-devant-Nancy on Thursday

On Thursday we cruised nine km down three and up two locks although with the toing and froing we were just under three km from where we’d started.

FRIDAY 6 MAY

While Karen went off for a run before breakfast, I pottered around and then set about getting things ready so when she returned we could wash off the latest dump of Saharan sand from the boat.  It doesn’t sound much compared to having a run, but first I had to pull the boat back towards the lock behind our overnight mooring and use pins to secure it.  The hose on the water point in the lock wasn’t particularly long so I then had to connect our two hoses together and then to the lock hose to reach the desired length.  By the time I’d done that and taken everything off the roof Karen & Buddy were back.  As luck would have it, two boats came through the lock while we were cleaning the boat, so it was just as well we hadn’t done it in the lock.  Ironically, they were the only boats we saw moving all day.

Lock cottages tend to have information plates above their doorways showing varying degrees of information.  On this canal they generally seem to be very basic with just a lock number on.  We have come across a couple that have also shown the distances to the next locks upstream and downstream like the first lock we went up after having a late breakfast.

Having said earlier about the wonderful countryside we would be encountering as we travel through Alsace, we went through one of the largest salt production areas of France. Not only were there salt factories there were also plants producing sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate.  The large piles of salt we could see really reminded us of the Middlewich area on the Trent & Mersey canal in England.  As there was a large factory alongside the next lock we decided to stop for coffee and a look around the place.

Moored at St-Phlin

St-Phlin seemed to centre totally around the sodium carbonate & bicarbonate factory of Novacarb with no sign of anything else going on at all.

Part of the massive factory in St-Phlin

In order to visit the factory village we’d been moored on a narrow lock landing on the approach to a pair of locks as you can see here.

The lock on the right is now closed and no longer used so we’d come up the left hand one.  In the late 1800s the Freycinet gauge was introduced as the minimum standard on waterways across France.  Where locks weren’t already large enough they were converted in situ, but on some canals a larger lock was built alongside the smaller one thus causing less disruption.  With less traffic these days only the larger locks are in use on this canal.

A little while later we crossed the Meurthe and were soon approaching St-Nicolas-de-Port where we planned to stop for lunch.

Crossing the Meurthe

As we came into St-Nicolas-de-Port there were more large salt factories complete with signs offering tours around their mines.

We moored in the centre of town next to a busy railway line and near a main road.

Feeling like dwarves moored behind the péniches at St-Nicolas-de-Port

We had a wander around the town and found the basilica built in the 14^th century in honour of St-Nicolas who was the patron saint of bargees. If that’s true, then the bargees would have been plying their trade on the rivers as canals weren’t built then.

Narrow streets of St-Nicolas-de-Port

The twin towers of the basilica

The two towers were badly damaged in WWII and restored in 1984 following a large donation by an ex-resident of the town who’d moved to the USA.

Plaque commemorating the benefactor

We turned our walk into a circular one and were nearly back at our mooring when we spied an insect hotel in the shape of a butterfly. 

After lunch we went through our 4,000th lock since living on the boat (1,481st in France):

Écluse 23

Followed by another salt factory…

…and then the large port at Dombasle-sur-Meurthe which is now used for private boats.  It must have been packed with salt barges back in the day especially as Solvay, the major salt production company in the area had 160 barges.  It now seems that most of the transportation is carried out by freight trains and lorries.

Dombasle-sur-Meurthe port

After another lock we pulled in and tied up at Sommerviller.  A local lady was resting at a picnic table and was interested in the boat and where we'd been in France.  When I found out she lived in the next village I plucked up the courage to ask if she knew of any lavoirs around.  I had to pluck up courage as when I’ve asked people in the past, they’ve assumed from my poor French that I really meant a launderette and I ended up really struggling and getting tied in knots trying to explain what I really meant.  Anyway, she understood but explained there aren’t many in Meurthe-et-Moselle, the département we’re currently in.    

A guy sitting at another picnic table could overhear us so came over and joined in and we had an interesting chat in broken English and French about lavoirs and also the history of a couple of the local villages.  After a while I took my leave and they continued chatting.  I’d obviously been a bit of a matchmaker as they continued for over an hour and seemed to take forever to say their goodbyes as he stood by his car, and she slowly walked away backwards.

Moored for Friday night at Sommerviller

On Friday we cruised 12 km up three locks.

SATURDAY 7 MAY

After our traditional Saturday breakfast of pancakes, we walked into Sommerviller to have a look around.  Apart from people making their daily trip to the boulangerie it was typically dead as we’ve come to expect in small towns and villages even on Saturdays.  The only old pictures I could find of the village were of the church and a salt works.  The salt works has long since disappeared and been replaced by canal side villas, so we had to try and capture the church from a similar position for a then and now picture.  Nearly every house along the high street had retained its original cart/horse/produce gateway as can be seen here:

Then and now

The school on the small central square

We had an easy couple of hours after our walk sitting outside reading and in the afternoon we carried on a few km to Crévic, the next village along the canal.  We haven’t seen walnut trees since we left the Marne valley nearly four weeks ago, so we were beginning to think we’ll miss out on the imminent pickling season.  That was until we reached the first lock and we saw the tell-tale sign of the young green-purple leaves and the walnut tree shape of a walnut tree.  They are the last of the common trees to come into leaf, even later than the oak and ash which are among the last to come out.

Walnut tree at Crévic lock

Hopefully they’ll now be present at the locks as we continue eastwards so we’ll be able to pick the young fruit while they’re still soft and green in a few weeks. 

We moored up when we arrived at Crévic but decided not to venture into the village until Sunday.  Once again, we saw two boats on the move during the journey, and again both were hire boats.

Our mooring for Saturday night at Crévic

On Saturday we cruised three km up two locks.

Richardménil (up the junction)

SATURDAY 30 APRIL

Considering we were in France’s 20^th largest city we were expecting Nancy to be noisy with revellers into the early hours especially as there were so many tourists around.  In the end it was unbelievably quiet overnight and the same when we awoke in the morning.

Before setting off on a tour of the old town Karen dug out her camera and found that she last used it exactly two years ago during the first covid lockdown.  After seeing Ian & Lisette's recent blog update we were reminded how much better SLR camera pictures can be compared with those taken with our phone cameras.  This was the last picture she took which was from the side hatch when we were confined to our mooring in Châlons-en-Champagne.

The park was closed for two months during lockdown

Having a decent camera means that Karen's pictures have a lot more detail than those I take with my phone camera.  We took both with us on the town trail, so some pictures were taken by Karen with the camera and others were taken by me with my phone.  Just across from our mooring stood Sainte Catherine’s gateway where we had a few comic moments while Karen got used to the camera again.  First she couldn’t find the on/off switch and then, standing in the middle of the road to get a picture of the gate, she found the timer was set!

Sainte Catherine’s gate built in 1761

Each item on the old town trail was marked with a raised number on a brass plaque inlaid in the pavement depicting the layout of the town as it was in 1611:

At no. 10 - rue des Dominicains

The tour started as expected in Place Stanislas that we briefly visited on Friday.  The square and surrounding buildings were built to commemorate the King of Poland who, when he was deposed in 1709, fled to Lorraine.  The area was built between 1752 and 1756 and we both felt it was up there in the list of the most stunning squares we have come across.   Even though traffic is not allowed in the square nowadays it seemed a sacrilege that it was used as a car park between 1958 and 1983.

Approaching on the road from the port

To the left the hôtel de ville takes up one entire side:

On the side opposite the hôtel de ville the buildings were built lower, apparently for defensive purposes but I don’t quite understand why:

The gateways leading into the square were incredibly ornate:

As were the statuettes along the edges of the roofs on all the buildings:

Another gate, Arc Héré, stands on the roadway between the square and the governor’s palace:

The governor’s palace was yet another building that was erected in the 1750s:

The old town of Nancy lay to the left and behind the governor’s palace with plenty of narrow streets and yet two more old gateways:

The 14th century porte de la Craffe

Both sides of the The 16th century porte de la Citadelle

Although the gateways are still standing there are very few remains of the original walls that protected the town at the time.  Some of the streets were lined with shops and bars whereas others were purely residential:

When we finished the tour, we walked back to the boat via the parc de la Pépinière where there was a grand art nouveau bandstand:

The 1875 Mozart bandstand

Although the outside cafés were packed with tourists lunching, we felt that it just wasn’t quite warm enough to join in, so we went back to the boat.  As much as we could have stayed and continued exploring Nancy for another couple of days we decided to move on.  We wanted to complete the boucle de Nancy before carrying on towards Strasbourg: the boucle is an 85 km ring of waterways around Nancy.

Last year we joined the boucle from the canal des Vosges (6 o'clock) and went along the bottom left quadrant which is the river Moselle. We left the boucle at Toul (9 o'clock) and turned onto the canal de la Marne au Rhin (ouest).  This year we re-joined the Moselle at Toul and completed the top half, again along the Moselle followed by the canal de la Marne au Rhin (est) through Nancy where we are due to continue west (3 o'clock).  This leaves the short bottom right quadrant which is called the embranchement de Nancy (aka canal de jonction de Nancy).  

The embranchement links the Meurthe and Moselle valleys and is only 10 km long with 13 locks on one side of its summit and five on the other.  It fell into disuse for a while but was fully restored in 2004.  It has no natural water supply, so the summit is fed by water from a pumping station.

Before reaching the embranchement we stopped outside an Intermarché where I topped up with fuel and Karen picked up some supplies.

About to turn right onto the embranchement

As we were going up the first couple of locks, we’d noticed a guy following us and taking lots of pictures.  When we got to the top of the second lock, he came to talk to us.  It turned out that he lived in Nancy but helps crew on commercials based over at Vitry-le-François.  We were able to suggest names of boats like Draakar and Dhana that we’ve often seen that way and he was pleased we knew them as he'd crewed on them.

Once we were out in the country, we moored at Fléville-devant-Nancy for a late lunch before watching the English girls beat the French in the six nations decider.

On Saturday we cruised seven km up three locks.

SUNDAY 1 MAY

Early morning mist at Fléville-devant-Nancy on Mayday

May the first is a strict holiday in France for Labour Day so, along with everything else, the canals were closed.  We thought we’d chosen a good spot to stay put for a couple of days until Karen saw that there were lots of wild cats around.  Alongside the towpath were little huts with bowls inside, some also had cats in them.  Every so often a cat would wander along the towpath beside the boat.  The hopes of letting Buddy laze outside in the sun for a couple of days wouldn’t work so when we were around the boat he had to be tied up on the back deck.

Coincidentally we heard from Dave & Helen on Brontë who are making their way towards us from Strasbourg on their way to the south of France.  They’d been through a lock up near the inclined plane at Arzviller where there were lots of wild cats being fed by locals too.  When I say wild cats, I mean feral cats as they looked like domestic cats as opposed to true wild cats.

Our morning walk took us back to the canal de la Marne au Rhin (est) as Karen wanted to check if water was available at a lock that she’d been told had a water tap.  She checked the tap when we found the lock and sure enough it was on, so we’ll top up when we go through in a few days and hopefully clean off yet another dumping of Saharan sand.  We then walked down to the river Meurthe, crossed on a footbridge and carried on along the riverbank for a while.

Crossing the Meurthe

We came back via Fléville-devant-Nancy where a brocante was in full swing.  It felt like the whole town had turned out, many of them setting up a stall to sell their unwanted items.  Nearly all the streets were closed off to traffic and given over to the brocante. There were also plenty of sprigs of lily of the valley to be seen.  It’s been a tradition for many centuries in France to give a sprig to family members on Mayday to bring them good luck for the coming year.  Karen's even received them in previous years and once she was presented with a sprig in an épicerie.

We’ve been looking for a replacement fold up table for using outside and couldn’t believe it when we saw someone walking away with one under their arm.  If we’d have visited the brocante at the beginning of the walk, then we may have been the lucky ones.  I’ve never been to a car boot sale in the UK but suspect the same sort of items are on sale.  Charity shops are rarely seen other than in the large cities in France.  Instead, all départements have at least one large second hand store called an Emmaus where people take their unwanted items.  The money made by selling the items back to the general public is then distributed to the homeless and other needy folk.

As we left the town to make our way back home, we found a lavoir but unfortunately it was locked so we couldn’t see inside.

MONDAY 2 MAY

The aim for Monday was to get to the southern end of the embranchement, or the canal de jonction de Nancy to give it is proper name, where it joins the canal des Vosges.  We set off after Karen had a morning run and were watched by a couple of the wild cats as we left.

At the first lock was a warning sign about moth caterpillars as those of both the oak and pine processionary moth can be harmful when their hairs touch the skin of animals and humans; in the worst case bringing on an anaphylactic shock.  It was just as well there’d been the wild cats around as it had meant Buddy had been kept on his lead on the towpath for the last couple of days anyway.

At another lock an éclusier was using his van to drag a tree trunk from the water:

After 11 locks we reached the summit where we stopped for lunch and, soon after setting off again, arrived at some narrows.  These were controlled by traffic lights as there was a bend halfway along so large boats wouldn’t be able to see if the way was clear.  We understood why they were traffic light controlled as for example two commercials wouldn't be able to pass each other, but it did feel a little over the top for us as we went along.

The narrows at the summit

The style of the lock cottages was quite different to those we’ve seen on other canals as they were single storeyed.   They did have the usual small footprint but with only one floor they must have been quite cramped inside.

Most of the locks had a cottage

After the summit we dropped down five locks to reach the end and moored at the junction with the canal des Vosges at Richardménil, a spot we’d moored at when we came down the Vosges last year. 

Moored at Richardménil on Monday night

We’ve now completed the whole loop around Nancy so will now go back up the junction canal to re-join the canal de la Marne au Rhin (est) and continue our journey eastwards.  With so many locks over a relatively short distance we’d rather thought the junction canal was going to be purely functional.  We were pleased to find that it had been very pretty both climbing out of the Meurthe valley and then down the hill to where we were moored on the Vosges.

On Monday we cruised eight km through 16 locks (11 up and five down).

TUESDAY 3 MAY

As we didn’t investigate the area around Richardménil when we stopped over last year we spent Tuesday out and about exploring.  The weather was still nice and warm and with plenty of waterways around Buddy was able to have the odd dip to cool down.  We started by walking further up the canal des Vosges and crossed over at the first bridge we came to and followed a path into town.  Apart from yet more signs about the processionary moth caterpillars there wasn’t too much to report as most of Richardménil turned out to be quite modern, potentially a commuter town for Nancy maybe.

Sign recruiting people to look for and report the caterpillars

As we reached the town, we crossed a feeder channel that takes water from the Moselle further upstream to feed the pumping station opposite where we were moored, a visit we’d planned for after lunch.  It was here that we came across a lavoir on the banks of the feeder channel so not everywhere was modern although it didn't look particularly old.

We had a letter to post so sought out the post office and luckily it was one of the three days it was open.  Not so lucky though was that we’d missed the opening hours of 8.00-9.30am by a couple of hours.

View of the oldest part of town

We made sure our walk was a circular one and ended back at the boat in time for lunch.  In the afternoon we went off to explore the area around the pumping station that provides water to the summit of the junction canal.  There were several information boards explaining how the pumping station worked aimed at people with varying degrees of intelligence.

The simple version…

…more comprehensive…

…and one for the engineers

By the time the feeder channel reaches the pumping station it is below the level of the junction canal so has to go underneath the canal.  It does this at the junction under the stone banking with the green railings on top in the photo below.

Pumping station from our mooring

We were able to get down and peer into the building, but the windows were so grimy that we couldn’t get a clear picture of the turbines inside.  When we go back up the junction canal tomorrow, we’ll keep a look out on the summit for where the water feeds in.

The Moselle on the other side of our mooring