The 17th Time's the Charm

After weeks of asking a variety of insurance brokers--in both Europe and North America--to find insurance for our barge, we finally had success last week with our 17th application. On May 13 we spoke to a Dutch boat broker that we knew through the Barge Association and asked him for ideas on what we might try. We applied on May14 to a Dutch insurance broker that he recommended, and from whom we received an insurance quote on May 18. The quote was reviewed, signed, and returned by us within an hour. We spent the remainder of this past week on tenterhooks waiting for a policy to be issued and hoping there wouldn't be any unwelcome surprises to scuttle the deal. Not wanting to be left hanging through yet another holiday weekend (Pentecost Sunday and Whit Monday), Lon telephoned the insurance broker's office for a situational update early Friday afternoon. Just after 4 p.m. on Friday we received the best news ever--an email with insurance policy documents attached.  We're now gearing up to start cruising next week. 

Our insurance saga has been, to quote the Beatles, a "long and winding road." It's too much to describe in writing at the moment, but the experience definitely contained some elements of the absurd that will make for a good story over a glass of wine.

While waiting for something to "break", we tried to keep busy and distract ourselves from the anxiety of waiting. 

We attended a choral/orchestral concert in the Toul Cathedral.

We had a "bon voyage" lunch with Australian boaters Joan and
Paul on the day before they departed the Toul marina for
their summer cruise.

The main event, though, was to get off of the boat for two days this week, rent a car, and do some exploring. We decided to head to areas east of Nancy, in the vicinity of the Marne au Rhin Est Canal. That particular canal was in our proposed cruising itinerary for the summer, but our reasoning was that, if the insurance search dragged out much longer, we simply wouldn't have time to cruise those waters and still get to Rotterdam by season's end. So, better to see a bit of it now then to miss out on all of it. We only made plans for a 2-day trip because if the insurance were to come through in the next few days, we would prefer to be back on CARIB and getting ready to cruise. It was all about trying to find that "sweet spot."

We picked up the car near the Nancy railway station late morning on Wednesday, May 20. Our first stop, a mere 30 minutes later, was the town of Luneville. Like the much larger Nancy, Luneville was important historically with respect to the Duchy of Lorraine, a former monarchy independent of France (although located in mainland France). Up until the early 1700's, the ducal court was in Nancy, but when the French invaded Lorraine, Duke Leopold moved the court to the Chateau de Luneville. He enlarged the castle along the lines of Versailles, and it became known as the "Versailles of Lorraine." It remained the residence of the Dukes of Lorraine until the duchy became part of France in 1766.

The front of the chateau complex. It has been in a rebuilding phase for a couple of decades,
following a fire in 2003.
 

The "backyard" view of the chateau. Behind us stretched expansive French gardens.

The view from the central front portico.

The chateau currently houses a museum, but we didn't have the time to see what that was all about. We stopped for lunch, in part to get out of the grey and cool weather, then did a quick walk through what was a very quiet town on that Wednesday.

The Church of Saint James, a baroque building 
completed in 1747. Sadly, it was locked and we were
unable to see its famous "hidden" organ.

But, onward! Our destination for the day was to be the town of Saverne. In between Luneville and there, we made a few very quick stops.

The small canal side village of Lagarde had a lovely little port on the canal, but was also the location of two WWI cemeteries, one French and one German.

The German cemetery was not large, but was still well maintained after over 100 years.

It was our first viewing of the Marne au Rhin Canal Est east of Nancy, and we were impressed by how well-maintained the locks seemed, and the clarity of the weed-free water.

We don't recall the name of this town that we drove through, but the Alsacian storks had taken possession of the tops of five power poles along the road to build their nests. Most of the nests
had little ones. A baby boom in the making.

Our final stop before Saverne was the canal lock at Rechicourt-le-Chateau. The Great Lock, opened in 1965, is considered to be the highest Freycinet gauge lock in France. It replaced a series of 6 locks and has a drop of approximately 50 feet.

Most of the drop is hidden behind the colorful artwork.

Saverne occupies a beautiful site amidst the Vosges mountains. By this time, we had passed from Lorraine into Alsace. The German history here is obvious in the architecture and in the prevalence of the German language and culinary influences. For our one night here, we stayed in a lovely apartment in the center of town. Before our bow thruster repair delays last year kept us in Toul, we had thought that Saverne might have been our site for parking CARIB for the winter. From what we saw in our few hours here we were sorry that we hadn't been able to do that. The town had more energy than we've found in Toul and would have been a lovely place to stay.

The Alsace Rooster.

The Maison Katz, from 1605, is one of the oldest houses in town. It was built by Henri Katz.
The facade is Renaissance German. The modern artwork at right makes sense when one 
considers that "katz" means "cat" in German.

Standing in the marina of Saverne, and looking at the front of the Rohan Palace across the 
water. The Rohan Palace is a former episcopal palace built in the 18th century. If Luneville Chateau was the "Versailles of Lorraine", then this building is the "Versailles of Alsace." We didn't have enough time to visit the museum it contains.

We stopped for an afternoon drink by the canal and its view of the main street of Saverne.

The Church of Notre-Dame of the Nativity. The tower, 
a Romanesque 12th century construction, is one of the
oldest parts of the building.

The port of Saverne. The hire boat base was gearing up for the summer season.

As Saverne is surrounded by a number of castle ruins on the hilltops, we took advantage of having the car to explore some of them on our Thursday return to Toul. A mere 10-minute drive from the heart of Saverne were the ruins of the Haut-Barr Castle, built atop rocks over 1500 feet above the plain. The ruins of the medieval castle date to the 12th century; the most "recent" ruins date to the late 1500's.

The rocks are the first things one sees when arriving
at the castle parking lot. Ruins are visible at various spots
atop the impressive rock piles. It reminded us of
Meteora in Greece, although on a much smaller scale.

The "Devil's Bridge" connects the ruins on two of the rock summits.

We're glad that we can still climb stairs. I wasn't especially fond of the climb, as I could see
through the stairs down to the ground. Lon's climb shows the staircase from a different perspective.

The view from the top.

Looking down, the arch of the entryway and the medieval chapel just beyond. The building at
left, with the half-timbering, is of newer construction and contains a restaurant where we 
enjoyed an amazing Alsatian flammekueche (like a very thin crust pizza).

Inside the interior of the castle grounds.

A short walk away from Castle Haut-Barr were a couple of additional historic sites. The first was a reconstruction of the Chappe Telegraph Tower. This was the site of one of approximately 50 communication towers--the first aerial telegraphy system--that linked Paris and Strasbourg from 1798 to 1852.

A bit further along were the ruins of two medieval castles, the Grand Geroldseck and the Petit Geroldseck. The Grand Geroldseck is one of the oldest castles in the northern Vosges. We were there on a day when volunteers of an association, whose purpose is to maintain the ruins, were working on the site. We were fortunate enough to be able to talk at some length to one of the volunteers and he explained how work was being done and the limits of what they could do.

A view of the cellars of the Grand Geroldseck.

Repairing the wall and making sure that plant material, which would be destructive to the structure,
 is kept at bay.

The multi-story castle keep in the background.

The entrance to the castle grounds.

Our wonderful "guide" and Lon share a laugh. The volunteer was a retired computer science
professional. Significant works have been ongoing on the site since 2014, and the volunteers can only repair things to the extent of what is actually known about the original structure. Since there are many holes in their knowledge, some things will never be able to be fixed. 

The Petit (small) Geroldseck was another few hundred meters from the larger castle. Not much remains today, and there appeared to be no active work being done on that structure.

Our final stop before Toul was at the Saint-Louis-Arviller inclined plane on the canal. A structure from the 1960's, it replaced a series of 17 locks in a section of the canal that traversed the Vosges mountains.  The mechanism consists of a moving tank that holds the boat and is counterbalanced by weights to which it is connected by cables. A boat drives in at the top, moves down the slope of the hill at a 41-degree angle, and drives out at the bottom of the hill. Going up is simply the reverse process. It's interesting for the boaters that get to use it, and it's a local tourist attraction.

The view of the inclined plane from the lower level as the bucket is descending with two boats.

Left: the bucket, into which a boat would drive. Upper Right: the view of the inclined
tracks from above with the basin below. Lower Right: The bucket approaching the basin level.

The wonderful news on Friday followed our return on Thursday. Even though we will be getting a later-than-planned start to our cruising, we believe that we can include the Marne au Rhin Canal Est in our cruising itinerary. We saw a lot to like about the canal and would be sorry to miss the opportunity to take the boat on its waters. Therefore, at the moment, we intend to leave Toul on Tuesday and cruise the Marne au Rhin Canal Est as far as Saverne, stay there for up to a week (to give us time for sightseeing in the area), and then turn around to head to the west and north.