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2004

This Weeks "We-think-we-are-here-map". (Our estimated position at the END of the week.


The Map is a "thumbnail", click on it for full size whilst still connected to the web-site

2 August 2004 Monday Pagny sur Merse to Toul Canal Marne a la Rhine

Promised disturbed night did not materialise - picnic tables remained unoccupied, voices heard after dark were transient, buzz bikes went to bed - all was joy.

Quick shopping, and watering up.

The water points at Pagny are specifically designed to prevent boaters filling their tanks. They are push button jobs, and give a mug of water per push. They are not susceptible to tying back like Sens, Mailley la Ville, and others. However, just get a thin adjustable, or a "water pump spanner" - those loose adjustables half way between vice grips and proper adjustable, grip the shaft between the button and the main body - it is usually square - and unscrew the whole tap innards 2 or 3 turns. Water issues forth from mouth of tap! Don't unscrew too far - if pressure is high and it comes off there is no way you'll get it back on. This is, of course, naughty, but Pagny advertises itself everywhere as supplying water - we ensured that this claim was true!

Quiet run, big wide canal, no traffic at all to start with, then suddenly 4 boats all together heading West - Up the hill to the tunnel, or more likely down the Meuse to Givet, Belgium, Holland, etc.

Arrived at little tunnel - Foug - just about to enter - 1 way working controlled by lights - when noticed lights that had been green up to a few seconds ago had turned to red - within probably 30 seconds of our entering. Startling. .

Tempted to disobey on premise that they had turned after the controller thought we had entered. Decided not to risk it. Quite right - sat in canal side shade for 20 minutes, and out came 2 boats! Lights changed to green - in we went, yellow flasher flashing.

Straight out and into rather soulless section of 11 locks - all automatic chain - down to Toul.

Into Toul late lunch time, and as usual frightened everyone as we floated around discussing best available birth. Received a lot of inaccurate information from moored boaters - more designed to keep us away from them, than to help! We all do it!

Chose a site on the jetty, and popped ourselves in comfortably with 1 metre to spare in front, and 1 behind.

Rather silly yacht in front asked us to watch his counter, then gave us detailed information on mooring with springs, necessity for licenses on the German Moselle(!) and how dangerous the commercial traffic was. Then admitted he hadn't been there anyway!

Found jetty blazingly hot from concrete and gravel, looked for and found another site on a concrete arm under some trees, so undid everything, and moved quietly out.

Nice mooring, sheltered under trees until evening, quick bike around town - nice town, always liked it, have another look to-morrow, but very hot.

3 August 2004 Tuesday In Toul

Shopping, boat cleaning, Explored town, and visited Cathedral.

Received e-mail from F.S. confirming rumours flying around during last 2 days that the River Moselle,

down which we proposed to go, was completely and utterly closed for at least a month due to the destruction of a set of gates at Blenod Lock, just above Pont a Mousson - 2nd (maybe the 1st) lock down.

So re-thing on plans - we'll go through Nancy, and thence along the Marne au Rhine and turn down the Canal de Houilleres to the River Saa - i.e. we'll do an out and back on the second half of the circuit we originally intended - missing out the Moselle altogether.

4 August 2004 Wednesday Toul to Nancy River Moselle.

Cool and overcast after heavy rain last night.

Bread run, then off. Tragedy of Toul was closure for a month's holiday of "Espace Fresheur", a green grocery chain who are quite excellent. Very large establishment - strange to close completely, just like that. What do the suppliers do?

First automatic from the basin worked fine, the lift bridge and next auto likewise.

To good to last - automatic out of the canal onto the river failed.

Usual saga of phone calls, brush offs, etc, until finally "somebody" came, and after a deal of fiddling, got it to work, and we issued out onto the Moselle with a little German cruiser, who left us, literally, in a cloud of spray and foam.

However, re-met him at the first 10 acre lock, where he had been made to await us.

The Moselle is fun, but there is little to write about.

Two more 10 acre locks - with German keeping to our speed now between the locks, and right turn at Frouard. The left half of the junction, which goes down the Moselle through Pont a Mousson, Metz, and eventually Koblenz, looked awfully deserted and abandoned, whereas the Nancy arm was full of all sorts of boats, including 3 or 4 huge cargo carriers (100 metres X 9 metres plus) and a large Hotel boat (sign said 82 passengers) moored up at the entry lock, and lots of really large German, Belgium and Dutch cruisers in the P.de P.

Got 16 metres of jetty for the night for €9.01, and settled down.

Very hot, and windlass, and Nancy very noisy. (remember that from before!

5 August 2004 Thursday Nancy to Somerville Canal de la Marne au Rhine

Intention was to leave Nancy first thing. However, having met people we last saw in Ay exactly 2 years ago on their arrival in France - gossip session ensued, and time passed - not wasted - we don't waste time when boating.

Visited gardens - we last saw them 2 years and were most impressed, so a re-visit was necessary.

Also wandered around to in Stanislaus Square (Absolute centre of city) completely cut off with enormous road works being carried out.

Finally left at 12.00 to start on automatic flight out of Nancy and onto Marne au Rhine.

Found first lock switched off, with a badly written notice in cabin window saying - in effect - that the automatic loft was not an automatic lock.

Some 30 minutes and several tel calls later, a dozy woman arrived, switched the lock on, put us through, and switched it off.

Just up from the lock was an Intermarchee, that we first discovered and used 6 years ago. Subsequently, building works cut it off, so it was no longer accessible to the canal.

Further works have cleared everything up, and the situation is now as convenient as any supermarket we have used on the system as any for fuel and supplies. Not, however, the cheapest!

Fueled to the top, and bought heavies.

Carried on up the canal, lunching on the hoof. Next lock same as first - automatic switched off - and to-gether with a Swedish family in a RIB with 2 small kids, waited 90 minutes for L.K.

Excuse - only 1 L.K. per 2 locks! Why any at all for automatics? Anyway, second LK arrived so there were, in fact, 2 L.K.s for 1 lock!

The next 3 were little better - the whole section was an incompetent shambles, all automatics switched off and worked by employees of the VNF every now and again!

Great pity - enormous reserve of good will built up this year over the whole system, where things on the whole have been enormously improved was largely squandered during one afternoon's incompetence. (Pompous old fart speaking)

One has to ask - is there another agenda here? No manager at any level in any organisation would have permitted this chaos.

We eventually got out of the last in the section at 1800, and to make quite sure we had shaken the dust off our feet by going through the first of the next section - automatic working automatically - and moored up in Somerville just before 7.00 p.m., tired frustrated and thankful to be clear of VNF Nancy!

Took from 1200 to 1900 to do 17 kms, and 4 locks!

It was all very frustrating - it was very hot and muggy too - but we haven't really got any right to complain! After all, it is their country, their system, and their customs, and we pay half nothing for it, so perhaps a bit of withdrawal is indicated.

Slept well - incredibly quiet, compared with recent moorings. If we tried hard we could just hear the overnight chemical works night shift.

6 August 2004 Friday Somerville to Einville Canal de la Marne au Rhine

Wonderfully quiet night, and late start, in grey, hot, bright hazy weather.

Held up at first lock by lock failure - hotel boat above wanting to come down, us below wanting to go up. Lock full of water, light green to the hotel boat, gates firmly shut.

However, even after 90 minutes waiting, 11 kms and 4 locks in a full day shows that we are not pushing it very hard. at the moment.

This is a nice wide, full (of water) canal, and although we have, in fact, journeyed along here twice before

there has on both occasions been an agenda to "get somewhere".

The canal is mostly set slightly higher than the surrounding country to the South, running along the contour, but climbing across it steadily. There are few trees and bushes to obstruct views and we are making the most of it's tranquility - remembering there are 3 large hire bases between us and Saverne, and we are right in the middle of the busiest weeks in the season, so there is plenty of traffic.

The countryside itself is flattish, gently rolling, and agribusiness is well established - although livestock farming - complete with attending hordes of flies - is occasionally seen. Ploughing is in full swing, with the majority of the cereals taken off.

Stopped at possible mooring - revetts and short grass - just after Einville, and Herself charged off to see if local boulangerie was open. This time once before we came here to find they were taking the month off - closed! Found exactly the same - but also the other boulangerie - new since our last visit - was also closed. What the locals do for bread, difficult to say, but not keen to divulge.

Mooring not so good, after all, shallow and grubby, so moved on a km or so to another spot - also short grass, revetts, tree shade, etc. Much better, so moored up comfortably. Virtually no traffic.

Unable to work out why on this section of the canal the banks are so often not parallel, with widening carried out - at building, presumably - for no apparent reason. Further, the road - little tarred unlined - seems more or less to follow the bank, but will suddenly loop away for 200 metres, then come back, with no apparent reason, or use of the land cut off.

7 August 2004 Saturday Einville to la Lagarde Canal de la Marne au Rhine

Although deep in the countryside, did hear the odd sound such as very distant train/combine/ploughing tractor, or a remote fisherman choking on his Gauloise.

Again - late start and slow gentle motoring. No worries about where we are going, or when we will get there.

Being plagued by flies and wasps - but survivable.

Into la Lagarde about teatime, to find the place packed with Germans and Belgians. The Moselle closure has affected them a lot - with the big boats going down to the Saar, and thence to the Moselle, or to Strasbourg and the Rhine.

Wanted a mooring with electricity to charge batteries - we are running such short times now that they are over-empty by morning after about 4 days. Found, having found a spot on the edge of the marina, canalside, and having paid €6.00, that the supply current was so limited it took till midnight to charge, and we had to switch off the charger to get the fan turning.

Must get this system sussed. How do they limit supply? Thought it was by low current circuit breaker - but haven't yet blown one, so it can't be that. Wondering if a sneaky 2 plug in parallel connection to the supply point feeding into our main cable might be the answer. Saw one or 2 like that in Toul. However, the ramifications could be dangerous. Perhaps 2 cables, and 2 points on the boat, but all getting too

complicated. Will probably just think about it for a year, or so. The present system, even when fed through almost 90 metres of domestic 16 amp cable, seems to work - we get the batteries charged eventually, although we are very rarely that far away.

No sooner moored than a Belgium - even more ancient couple (to look at) than us moored their nasty cruiser right on our bows, and tied themselves up on the bollards all over our ropes. 20 minutes pulling and cussing - suspect it was his revenge because we got to the nearer power point just before him. Used CBL brolley across bows for privacy - slightly ostentatious, it is brilliant yellow!. These high boats can sit on the decks and gaze straight in on us - and do.

Many gongoozlers - port very busy - changeover day in middle of busiest time of year.

8 August 2004 Sunday la Lagarde to just short of Bataville. Canal de la Marne au Rhine

Another late start - watched, while we enjoyed our Sunday boiled eggs hire boats struggling through first lock. Noted that most of the private boats had gone by the time we surfaced - the locks here open 0730 on Sundays, and they must know that well.

Went up about 10.30 in a gap in the traffic, and got almost straight in on our own.

However, next lock up queue of 5 boats waiting - including 1 hire boat that bounced off entry buttresses so often, he was persuaded to go back and try again later.= after others had gone through.

Found some shade in the bushes, trimmed it back a bit, and relaxed for an hour or so, watching the fun.

Then on to here, pleasant run, pleasant country, and in spite of occasional bottle necks, very little traffic.

9 kms, 4 locks!

Flies dreadful - flock of sheep in neighbouring field trying to keep cool under trees.