Hurry Up and Wait

The heat was back with a vengeance this week. Low 90's on Monday, July 22, topping out in the low 100's on Wednesday and Thursday, and a "cool-off" to the 90's on Friday. We tried--we really tried--to combine early departures with short cruising days so that we wouldn't have to deal with locks under a blazing sun. However, on several days events conspired to delay us unexpectedly and/or make cruising days longer than 4 hours the best of our available options.

The operating hours for the automatic locks are stated as being 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.  We'd thought that perhaps we could push things a bit to get an earlier start--say, 6:30 a.m.--and if we ran into mechanical trouble with a lock we would just have to wait until 7 a.m. to get it sorted out. It turns out we were wrong on two counts.  First, the VNF turns the locks on and off remotely, so a 7 a.m. start time means that locks are totally non-functioning overnight and aren't activated until about 7:05 a.m. (as indicated by the lock signal lights.) Approaching Lock 15 at 6:45 a.m. as we left the port of Montbeliard on Monday got us nothing but 20 minutes of floating and waiting until the lock turned on. Ten minutes later we approached the bascule bridge at Courcelles and were stopped again. Many of the lift or swing bridges open automatically when a boat trips a sensor, but not this one. I called the VNF to request an opening and was told someone would be there--at 9 a.m.  So, we rested the boat against a concrete wall and cooled our heels for an hour-and-a-half.

The busy swing bridge at Courcelles. We thought the 9 a.m."appointment"

to open the bridge was a nod to rush hour traffic. Later events indicate that

that was simply the start of the work day for those particular VNF staff.

Lon making the best of our unexpected stop at the Courcelles

swing bridge. We would have preferred to have been cruising

in the cool morning hours, but time to relax with our coffee

wasn't all bad.

In early afternoon we stopped for the day on a wooden quay that was peaceful and felt like it was the middle of nowhere. The small villages of Colombier Chatelot and St-Maurice-Echelotte were actually behind the trees on the opposite side of the canal, but a walk through Colombier Chatelot in the early evening did not reveal much activity.

A Public Service Announcement by the mayor's

office of St-Maurice/Colombier: "Your dog

 cannot pick up his poop alone .  .  . Do it for him

and public spirit vis-à-vis your neighbors." Judging
by the number of "piles" we encounter on our walks,
this and similar efforts aren't having much effect.

A very short cruise the next morning got us to our mooring in the town of L'Isle sur la Doubs. Our stop in this town on our way "upstream" a month earlier didn't hold a lot of good memories for us. We were having bow thruster issues at the time, and the flaky electricity on the quay fried one of the fuses for our power inverter. After that 3-day visit we didn't want to spend more than 1 night this time around--but it was nice having shore power for our air conditioner.

What wasn't so nice in the stretches of canal approaching and leaving L'Isle sur la Doubs was the shallowness of the water and the large amount of weed that was present. We had noted the presence of weeds on our way upstream, but it's amazing how a month of little rain and warm temperatures can cause a weed "explosion." Six kilometers per hour was our usual cruising speed in the canals, but the weed and the shallow water significantly affected the efficiency of the engine and rudder, and slowed us down to less than 5 kph.

Weed infestation in the canal and shallow water were not

our friends.

The VNF was working on weed
removal in one stretch of the canal.

The weeds that were scooped up were deposited on the bank

When we left L'Isle sur le Doubs we were hoping to stop halfway between there and Baume-les-Dames so that we could avoid a 7 or 8 hour cruising day. Unfortunately, a remembered "possible" mooring turned out to be less than ideal, so we motored on.

Despite the length of the cruise, several factors made this a
 good cruising day: 3 hours of "cool" in the early morning;
 shade on Lon on the flybridge and an umbrella for

me as I worked the locks; and the fact that river cruising was

again part of the equation--going downstream gave us faster

 speeds (10 kph) and much less weeds to contend with.

Back in the Doubs valley with its towering cliffs

We stayed two nights in Baume-les-Dames. This gave us a mooring with electricity (hooray for AC at night!), kept us from having to cruise on an absolutely-miserably-hot Thursday, and gave us the time to visit the historic center of the town. On our previous stop in BLD it was also extremely hot, and we were so busy trying to track down bow thruster parts that we didn't have the time or energy to do any sightseeing.

The town of Baume-les-Dames owes its name to an abbey established there in the 9th century, in which the nuns from noble families in the region followed the order of Saint-Benoit. The historic center was charming, with many lovely old buildings.

The interior of the abbey, on which construction started in 1738. Although the religious order was wealthy, 

the ambitious project ran out of money before it was completed. The French Revolution closed

the abbey in 1791. The building was later used for "corn exchange, parties, and storage."

Today, the building is the site of events such as this art exhibition. 

In the town center of Baume-les-Dames

Monument to Claude, Marquis de Jouffroy d'Abbans,

inventor of the "pyroscaphe", the very first steam

boat to actually navigate.  Its first cruise

occurred in this area in 1776.

Lon being a kid again in the BLD bike park.

Decorative mailboxes on one of the old BLD buildings

Our stopping point in Baume-les-Dames. CARIB III is

the boat furthest back. 

Friday was also a very hot day.  The weather forecast for the weekend contained predictions of thunderstorms and rain starting Friday evening and continuing all weekend. We could have stayed in BLD and waited it out, but as much as we liked the town, the thought of spending up to 5 nights there wasn't too appealing. The city of Besancon was our next major destination, so we decided that 7-8 hours of cruising to get to a place with more services and touristic options was a better idea. All was fine until we got to the 2nd lock of the day about an hour into the cruise (shortly after 8 a.m.). No lights, totally non-functioning. We called the VNF help line and were told help would arrive--at the "magic" hour of 9 a.m.  It was frustrating to--again--lose out on some of the cool morning hours for cruising as we waited out the hour until help arrived.

Waiting for the VNF to arrive at Lock 41.

The rest of the cruising day went fairly well, although the flybridge shade system failed, which sent us indoors to drive. But our route kept us on the Doubs river for most of the day, which helped the kilometers to pass by fairly quickly. We were tied up in Besancon by 2:30 p.m. and have settled in for a 10-day stay. We're planning to finish exploring the city sights that we didn't get to during our prior stay here, and we'll be renting a car for a few days to allow us to travel a bit further afield for sightseeing and shopping.

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).

27 Seconds

27 seconds--that's how long it took for the 200 or so bicyclists in the Tour de France to pass our viewing position in Mulhouse. Add another 3 minutes for all of the cars to pass by that were carrying the spare bikes, and we spent maybe 30 minutes on our "Tour de France experience" from the time we claimed viewing space street side until we left to continue our other afternoon activities on July 11.

The Tour de France peloton rolls by on their way to the

official starting position of Stage 6.  A very high 

concentration of very fit young men!

After the cyclists came the cars toting the teams'

spare bicycles

It was a fun thing to see and we didn't mind at all that it was of such short duration. It allowed us to easily make it to the local cinema to see an afternoon showing of the movie "Yesterday" in VO (Version Originale).

5 minutes before showtime we were the only people in the

theater, but were ultimately joined by a few others.

It's been a relaxing several days in Mulhouse. We had no huge, significant "must do/must see" items on our list, so we simply did things as the mood struck us: evening strolls through various neighborhoods and local parks; checking out the local market, said to be the largest in eastern France; visiting the small fine arts and city history museums; more trumpet try outs for Lon at local music stores; occasional cycling jaunts; and checking out the city's Bastille Day celebration on July 13 (the day before the actual Bastille Day).

The Port of Mulhouse. C.A.R.I.B. III is in the center-right

of the photo.

Local bands, police, and firefighters during a Bastille Day

ceremony.

The "covered market" portion of the Mulhouse Market.

The amount of food offered was so overwhelming that

we left without buying anything.

The fresh produce section of the outdoor market. An additional

section of similar size "behind" us offered clothing, shoes, and a

variety of other goods. Also overwhelming.

Ah, the Good Old Days! Gossip too

much and you got to wear this heavy

"head" around your neck.

We discovered that the woods on the outskirts of one of the small villages near Mulhouse contained the remains of the battery of a heavy German gun that had been used to threaten the town of Belfort during the Great War. The platform that supported the Canon de Zillisheim (a gun originally designed for naval use) and the associated tunnels still exist as part of an outdoor "museum." With a range of 47.5 km, shells were fired toward Belfort 41 times between February and October 1916. The static nature of the installation ultimately made it impractical and the gun was removed for use elsewhere. Our interest in WWI history gave us the perfect excuse to hop on our bikes and check it out.

Lon approaches the main entrance to the 

underground tunnels. We briefly entered, but

didn't feel entirely comfortable staying inside.

Lon overlooking the gun emplacement site.

On the stairway leading down to the 

Command Center

Today we experienced "half-timbering on steroids" in the Alsatian town of Colmar, located about 25 miles (and a 20-minute train ride) to the north of Mulhouse. The city has a well-preserved old town and is a center for Alsatian wines. Like the rest of Alsace, Colmar spent much of its more recent history ("recent" being post-1871) moving between French and German control.

The streetscape is a mix of canal and 

colorful half-timbered buildings

The "Little Venice" neighborhood of Colmar along the 

Lauch River

The "Statue of Liberty" is the

symbol for the Colmar

 walking tour because. . . 

. . . the French sculptor who

created the Statue of Liberty- 

Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi-

was born in Colmar

As pretty as Colmar was, the fact that it had a "tourist train"

meant that it was more overrun with tourists than we like.

Tomorrow we "turn around" and head back the way we came on the canal. We had been looking forward to having Lon's cousin Frank Cedar as part of our crew for several days, but he caught a "bug" just before travelling and thought it best to cancel his trip. We'll have to give him a "rain check".

 

Focusing on the "Small Stuff"

We put in another long cruising day on Monday, July 8. Seven-and-a-half hours wasn't our preference, but we had a marina reservation waiting for us in Mulhouse, and after the unexpected maintenance and fuel delays we were more than ready to get to that city for our week-long stay. Usually we try to keep our motoring days to no more than 4 hours or so. Anything longer can get a bit tiring because the canal boating demands 100% hands-on attention at all times. As well, early afternoon arrivals at our mooring spots gives us time for exploration.

Encountering friendly people along the way

We had 22 locks--and 3 lift bridges--to get through
 with the help of the VNF

Mulhouse is the second largest city in the Alsace region (after Strasbourg), with over 100,000 inhabitants. It is an industrial city, but despite that, has a lovely historical center. It is the home of the largest automobile and railway museums in the world. A self-guided walking tour of the historical center on Tuesday gave us more half-timbered and/or centuries old buildings than we could fully absorb. "History overload" may be rearing its head, so rather than trying to remember all of the facts and figures of Mulhouse's history, I let myself focus more on small and whimsical details that I noticed during the walk.

If you're going to bar your ground floor windows for

security, you may as well have fun doing it

The Rooster of Alsace. The restaurant bearing this

sign must have spent a fortune on it. It didn't help--they

were out of business

Seen outside the Museum of Fine Arts. I didn't realize that

wrapping objects in yarn was a "thing" (yarnbombing)

until we started seeing it in Besancon.

An uninvited guest on the aft ladder of CARIB. 

Muskrat?

Place de la Reunion (the main square) in Mulhouse. Not the small stuff,

but I couldn't not show at least a bit of "half-timbered, centuries old" buildings

One of the churches in the city--not the biggest--is Eglise Sainte-Marie. It dates from the 13th C and was built by Franciscan friars. Abandoned during the 16th century, then turned into a warehouse, it became a Catholic church again in 1812. It's been beautifully restored, but what was interesting about our visit to the church was the exhibit there of religious cartoons by a French artist called Piem. Some were humorous, some were not, but all were thought-provoking.

"Bread and fish"
  "For how many persons?"

"Sorry, it's a mistake"

The railway station is conveniently just across the canal from our marina, so this morning we boarded a train and 25 minutes later we were in Basel, Switzerland. We experienced some linguistic whiplash, because Basel is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. It is the  second-largest city in Switzerland and straddles the Rhine River. We enjoyed a gorgeous, sunny day with temps in the 70's for our stroll through the old part of town. Yep, more half-timbered and/or centuries old buildings.

Another city, another 1000-yr old church.

Formerly Catholic, the Basel
Cathedral has been a Protestant

church for a few centuries now.

The cathedral was filled with burial crypts from the Middle Ages.

I find them fascinating, especially the insight into the dress
of the period

One of the four Basel ferries. A steel cable is strung between the

two banks of the river, and the ferry uses the current

(and a good rudder) to propel itself from bank to bank.
It was a fun way to cross the river.

A preserved portion of the old city wall and moat

The Rhine waterfront of the "Grossbasel" (Big Basel) side

of the city

At Tinguely fountain, full of playful mechanical apparatus

that move and spout water

The narrow streets of the old city

And after a few hours we are back again in the French-speaking part of the world. Mulhouse is the starting point tomorrow for Stage 6 of the Tour de France. After an opening ceremony at the local stadium, the cyclists will ride through the center of town on their warm-up before actually starting the racing portion of the stage outside of town. We're going to wander into town and see what there is to see. We refuse to stand for hours, and have no idea what kind of crowd we'll encounter, but hopefully we'll be able to get a glimpse of something.

Pre-race day festivities Wednesday evening in the main square

 of Mulhouse, with live music

City hall is decorated for the Tour de France