Heading Back to the Saone

On Tuesday, July 16, we cast off from the Mulhouse Pleasure Port and headed west on the Rhone-Rhine Canal--the direction we'd arrived from the previous week. It's not that Mulhouse was the end of the navigable waterway for boats headed east. We saw lots of motor cruisers coming and going in the portion of the canal east of Mulhouse. The Rhine River is only a few kilometers away and the canal leading to the river has been resized for commercial traffic. The problem is the length of our boat and the regulations for boats on the Rhine River. Because there is so much commercial traffic on the Rhine, any boat over 15 meters long is subject to a variety of requirements for both the boat and the crew. With a 21 meter boat we would have to have a significantly higher level of certification for boating competence or, lacking that, we would have been required to hire a certified captain. If that wasn't enough of an impediment, we would have to have sought a special certification for the boat in order to operate and be insured to cruise the Rhine. So, motor boats smaller than 15 meters long can choose to continue to the Rhine and from there to Strasbourg, but we could not. There used to be a northern branch of the Rhone-Rhine Canal that went from Mulhouse through Colmar and on to Strasbourg, but the Mulhouse-Colmar portion has been closed and disused for quite some time.

For the first 4 days of cruising we were again required to make arrangements each day with the French waterways authority (VNF) to get us through the manual locks. We decided that we were NOT going to repeat the 7-8 hour, 20+ lock days that we endured on our way to Mulhouse. We started as early as the VNF allowed (8:30 a.m.) and went 4 hours at most each day. This was a much more civilized way of doing it, leaving us less exhausted, less over-heated, and with the time and energy to explore small villages along the way: Heidwiller, Wolfersdorf/Dannmarie, Montreux-Chateau, and Bourogne. The villages seemed proud of their histories and the bits of ancient history that have survived the years.

University student Cecile accompanied us on the Dannmarie to

Montreux-Chateau segment on July 18. She was a friendly, talkative

young lady who enjoyed practicing her English.

Heidwiller, a village a mere 13 kilometers (but 11 locks)
 from Mulhouse, had many restored old farmhouse/barn combos
 in the village. In former times they were occupied by the vassals

of the lord who occupied the local chateau (still in existence, 

but not open to the public). The chateau was seized during the

French Revolution and used as a prison during The Terror.

Most of the half-timbered farmhouses in Heidwiller date from

 the 17th and 18th centuries. This one was occupied, but supports

 holding up the upper story and the condition of the roof

give evidence of a critical need for restoration.

The city hall and war memorial in Montreux-Chateau had the

 most beautiful flower display. The photo doesn't do it justice.
When we entered Montreux-Chateau we left the Alsace region.

The Chapelle Sainte-Catherine in Montreux-Chateau.

It was built in the 16th C as a grave for the family
 Reinach-Montreux, the lords of this area. At least
 7 family members are buried here, including the heart

of Nicolas Reinach, camp marshal in the army

of Louis XIV, who was killed at the siege of

Girona in 1696 during the Spanish Civil War.

Bourogne as seen from the canal. The village was not large,

but still had a "discovery trail" mapped out.

Saved as historic monuments in more than one of these villages

were the communal laundries, most dating to the mid-1800's.

Bourogne had 3 "lavoir". Each had several troughs with

different purposes: water for humans, water for animals,

and clothes laundering. I am not tempted to give up my
Miele washer.

I was interested in seeing the Merovingien Cemetery in 

Bourogne. Dating from the 7th and 8th centuries, archeological

digs in 1907 and 1909 discovered 214 graves and numerous

artifacts. The reality of present day was slightly less exciting

 than my imagination. When we got to the site it looked like . . . .

. . . . grass. Frankly, we're not even sure we were looking

in the correct direction. It wasn't well marked. 

The operative word for the first 3 days was "locks".  Lots and lots of locks. This meant, of course, that actual forward progress was pretty limited given the time spent. For example, our cruise on Thursday from Dannmarie to Montreux-Chateau required 4 hours to move less than 10 km (6 miles) down the canal. The 15 locks may have had something to do with that.

Looking at the Dannmarie to Montreux-Chateau flight of 

locks from the downstream side. 2+ hours alone to pass from 

lock 13 through lock 2. Once we got through lock 2 we were
back at the "summit pound"--the high point of the Rhone-Rhine
Canal. All subsequent locks will be "down" until we exit the canal
 at the Saone River (186 kilometers from the summit). 

We've been fortunate that we chose the Rhone-Rhine Canal for our cruising this summer. Much of France is suffering under drought conditions, and low water in a number of the French canals is starting to result in canal closures. The Rhone-Rhine is also lower than it should be, but for now it has enough water for our relatively shallow draft boat.

Seen as we were transiting the summit pound. We aren't supposed to be

seeing "beaches" on the sides of the canal, so it's obvious the water is too

low. The low water also leads to the overabundance of weeds at some

stretches of the canal.

The heat and drought haven't kept people off their bicycles.

France has quite a cycling culture. The EuroVelo 6 trail--a

multi-national cycle trail that crosses Europe west to east,

from Nantes, France to the Black Sea--is the "tow path"

along much of the Rhone-Rhine Canal.

We arrived yesterday in the city of Montbeliard and took a break today from boating. Lon was too busy with projects when we passed through here two-and-a-half weeks ago to see much of the town, so we've had a couple of leisurely strolls to remedy that situation. Peugeot has a factory here, and what is said to be a great museum, but as neither of us cares about cars too much we have chosen to give it a "pass."

We have heard about the heat wave in the U.S.  Misery must love company, because France is going to be dealing with intense heat this coming week. For us this means cruise days that start no later than 7 a.m. and end before noon. We are glad to be back in the stretch of canal with the automated locks. Our "clicker" gives us a scheduling freedom that we missed in the stretch between Lock 7 (south) and Lock 39 (north).