We woke to bright sunshine, although with a morning chill to the air, and left port at 9.30 a.m. Exciting day today - we have the Grand Canal d’Alsace to navigate, which will ultimately lead us to the mighty River Rhine. There is a a fast flowing current (with us thankfully!) and fairly long breaks between large, deep locks. The drawback being the usually pretty long waits for the locks to be prepared. Of our four locks today, the two deepest are 14.7m and 15.5m respectively.
It’s a pleasant trip, although not very scenic, with quite a lot of industry along the banks - mostly hydro-electric power stations and container ports.
Aphrodite is maintaining a speed of around 17 km......a very different kind of cruising to that on the small canals, being buffeting about by the commercial barges and a fairly strong current.
As we were in our last lock we got a reply from the Capitainerie in Breisach, telling us that there was space for us in the marina - Skip had mailed them two days ago, making a request! However we were cock-a-hoop as there are two ports in Breisach - one in France and one in Germany - and, after two previous visits here, we had not managed to moor on the German side. So today folks, we are in Germany!!!
It is a better side to be as the town of Breisach is here and the French marina has no restaurants, shops,etc.
A very nice German welcomed us, warning us that there was no water to be had - not a problem as we had half a tank left. So he helped us tie off and said we should go to the office to obtain a leaflet giving information about the port, etc. Nice man, nice place - we have decided to stay for two nights. Apart from no water, the electricity was a long way away, needing our extra long extension lead.
But.......there are advantages here! We didn’t notice when we moored, that a female coot was sitting on her nest at the end of the finger. She had three chicks and also four unhatched eggs - the male was very busy collecting tiny nuggets of food for her and the chicks. Such a treat for us to watch them, whilst trying not to disturb them of course!
We decided to go for dinner in town and picked a restaurant, Cafe Etoile. It was situated on a hill, so an uphill climb on the way, although it wasn’t too far. Unfortunately it turned out to be more of a tapas restaurant with not many choices, so we made the best of it and ordered bits and pieces. The view was lovely though.
A bit of TV and bed.
44 km 4 locks 5 1/2 hours
No comments:
Post a Comment