Made it to Mulhouse

Here we are in Mulhouse, which is most satisfactory. Now it’s on to the Rhine and into Germany. It was another hot day with plenty of locks – this time we went ahead of our French travelling companions. I’m not sure how much they liked that, but tough cookie. They went ahead yesterday. Lots and lots of cyclists on the towpath, many in garish lycra (more the men than the women).  One splendid family party consisted of two little girls following their mother and learning to roller blade, followed by an older girl and boy and father on unicycles.

Forgot earlier to post this pic of the unusual craft the canal company employs to try to reduce the weed infestation – they could do with a lot more, in my opinion.

Also a happy colour coordination

And a vintage muck spreader put to more odoriferous use.

Over the top

A long hot day to get over the top and down into Alsace. In all it has been about 185 kms and 72 locks to get up the hill – done in under a week on the water. Now its downhill all the way to Koblenz.  The first 15 locks only took two and a half hours, which was a relief. When we were here last, it was a question of two hunky young men on scooters dashing from lock to lock and winding gates and sluices by hand: now it’s pretty girls on bicycles pressing buttons.

Here’s a picture of a canal bridge, just outside Montbeliard.

Here’s one of Nick chatting to one of the pretty girl students doing summer jobs as éclusières.

And here’s a sight of the lock staircase, as best we could manage.

We are now settled in the port at Dannemarie, enjoying a refreshing beer, and  should make it to Mulhouse tomorrow – another long and not very interesting day as I recall. Then it’s onto the Rhine on Sunday.

Us again

Pleased to have managed to post a photo and map yesterday, so here’s another today – Saskia in somewhat scruffy cruising mode – taking the sun at Isle sur Doubs. The important item to note is on the roof at the back – the barbecue is brilliant on these cruises. For those who don’t know Saskia, although she looks modest – and is, indeed - she is quite comfortably fitted out. The divan in the main cabin folds out into a full size double bed, there is a hot shower, fridge with freezer – ice for the evening whisky – a washing machine, cooker and oven etc.  We have 240 volts power, either when plugged in at a port, or though the inverter from the batteries.  Unfortunately the air conditioning isn’t working, and the yard has failed to find out why. But the heating is, and was used earlier. For the technically minded, we have a 75HP Volkswagen marine diesel engine, which drinks about three litres an hour at normal cruising speed – 8kph is the speed limit on the canals. The tank is about 160 litres, giving us a fair range.

 Here is the captain relaxing after lunch......................

We are now tied up in the port of Montbeliard, best known, I understand, for an obscure Lutheran scholar and the fact that Peugeot makes most of its cars here. Various other boats we saw during the day are here too – including a jolly German couple in a Sadler 34 who come from Heidelberg, and promise to show us the town when we get there.  A fat German who keeps his boat at Cochem on the Mosel tells me we will have no trouble on the Rhine – famous last words!

People ask about the costs of this sort of travel: you pay at commercial or municipal ports, but it varies. Last night at Isle sur Doubs came to 8.70 euro, tonight it is 16.60. For that you get to tie up, plug in and fill your water tank. Sometimes there’s WiFi, but not here. You can also simply stop on the side of the canal, drive in a stake and spend the night completely free: it can be very pleasant.

We are now off the River Doubs, which is something of a relief, and it has been canal all day – some parts a bit weedy, but others reasonably clear. Tomorrow we head for the summit, and then down an amazing staircase of some 15 locks in five kilometres into Alsace.

Summer definitely arrived in the Jura

Thanks to all who commented on the facebook post – evidently it worked. Not something I’m used to. This seems a bit easier and won’t clutter up anyone’s newsfeed with unwanted stuff.

On specific comments – yes Claudia, we will try to do pix, but we are using a 3G dongle for wifi connection, paying by the amount of data up or downloaded, so it may have to wait until we find a free wifi. I will also try to put up a map today.

Good comments from Roger – we have seen lots of cyclists along the way, and being Tour de France time, many, shall we say more mature, gentlemen are recovering their youth in brightly coloured lycra. Your comments on the Rhine are certainly apposite. We have done the upper part, south of Strasbourg, a couple of times, once with a very strong current: extremely slow upstream, and an adrenaline rush downstream. I think the Rhine gorge could be a bit like that. Certainly when one gets out onto the Rhine, we feel very small – the locks, the barges, the current and everything. Should be fun.

Today was an easy trip up to L’Isle sur le Doubs, to give it its full name, in bright sunshine. One lock played up and we had to wait an hour for a somewhat louche young eclusier to appear and fix it. Nowhere to tie up, so lunch on the move.

Here's the map

And here;s the captain holding a rope:

Onward and upward

We sailed at about 8.30, in sunshine finally, with the washing drying on the rails. To our surprise there was another boat at the first lock – yesterday we saw none at all. It was a small German craft, but small or not it scooted along rapidly in the river – faster than us, which meant they prepared all the locks for our stately arrival.

We reached Baume les Dames at lunchtime and found a convenient mooring, just beside the bar, managing to dock reasonably neatly in front of the critical lunching audience. The plan had been to continue to Clerval for the night, but we had heard rumours of problems there and a phone call revealed that the port is closed. It is too far to get to Isle sur Doubs in the afternoon, so we decided to stay, and made a foray with the Shirley shopping trolley to a nearby SuperU supermarket.

On the road again...

…in a manner of speaking: we left Dole in a hurry and rather unexpectedly on Sunday morning, even though we had paid for the berth for Sunday night. Fairly early there started to be rumours that the floodgates had opened, and a great deal of telephoning – French offices do not function at the weekend – confirmed the news. So off we set, preferring to take our chances on the river than settle down to do the washing.

The trip was not uneventful: the canal cuts are full of weeds, which block the fresh water intake to the engine, so that the strainer has to be cleared very regularly. The river was definitely still in spate: the current extremely strong, cutting our speed to walking pace or less at times. And there were some vicious rain storms, one of which cut visibility to about 50 metres.

However, we made it to a useful mooring at Thoraise, just before a tunnel, and had a peaceful night. We had expected to share the pontoon with a pleasant Dutch couple who had been our neighbours in Dole, but they too got delayed by weed problems and didn’t make it. This morning we set off early, reaching Besançon by lunchtime, heading through the tunnel there too, rather than taking the scenic route around town, and after more laboured struggles against the current, found a quiet Port de Plaisance at Deluz, which is where we now are – with the washing machine doing its stuff, and the sun finally shining. For the past few nights we have been running the central heating in the evening, but not tonight, I think.

It is good to be on our way again, and despite the various delays, we are really only a couple of days behind schedule – which anyway had quite a lot of slack built in. I don’t think there will be any problem getting to Germany in good time.

Stuck in Dole

I realise that it is very hard not to start a post with Well.... or So.... but I will do my best to resist the temptation. Anyway, apologies for the silence: mainly resulting from my having left the laptop charger at home.

We finally set sail on Thursday afternoon after a frustrating couple of days in St Jean getting last minute things fixed - including an annoying leak around the forehatch which dripped on our faces in bed most of the night! We got back into the rhythm of going through the locks fairly rapidly, and reached Dole just before navigation closed for the night, finding a pleasant berth with electricity and water. However, the bad news was that further up the Canal, where it goes into the River Doubs, in a couple of places the water is high and they have closed the floodgates. Which means we are stuck here at least for today, and perhaps longer. So we took advantage to explore the town, which is charming, and also boasts a good computer shop, where we managed to buy a new charger. So it could be worse. Also the Orange Domino dongle that we have to convert 3G signals to Wifi is working well, which means that we have excellent connectivity.

Despite the delay, assuming we get going again in a day or two, and that there are no further extreme meteorological interventions, we are confident that we will meet up with our friends in Germany as planned.