Had a quiet day down to Schweich on Max’s birthday. He had his badge and balloons for the day and then we had a quiet meal out so gently easing himself into official retirement.
Max was humbled by every-bodies good wishes, texts, emails, face-book tags and phone-calls. THANKYOU. His first pension check gets paid on 6th August, and can buy him over 36 cans of his favourite beer a day or 13 bottles of Lidl Rose, so he is a very happy boy..!!
Visited TRIER by train. Its an amazing place that has the most Roman ruins outside Roman. Porta Nigra (180 AD ), known as The Black Gate, it is built of white sandstone blocks that have weathered to black. The builders didn’t use mortar but bound the bricks together with iron clamps and lead seals..
Caesar over-ran this area in 56 BC destroying the highly developed Celtic culture and founded the first towns. They built the mighty twin stone gates,(above), large spa bath complexes, a racing course, a bridge, a large amphitheatre and numerous other buildings that are still standing. Trier became an imperial roman residence with 80,000 inhabitants, the largest town north of the Alps. In 475 Trier fell to the Franks, and then ownership varied. The Cathedral, first built in 1040 and added to with St Mary’s Basilica ,one of the two first gothic church buildings to be built in the German Empire in the 13C.
Above part of the old bathing house,The Caldarium of the Imperial thermal springs, and the impressive Constantine Basilica (310BC), and below The Electoral Palace.
We explored the remains of the Roman Amphitheatre, built in the 1st c.AD. as a venue for gladiatorial games. It could hold 20,000 spectators in 26 rows of seats, with the arena covering 70m x 50m. It still has the 15 cages around the edge of the arena for the animals.
In ancient times they dug a sub basement area under the arena that also had a lifting platform to allow for changing scenery etc during plays.
Robert & Sue, with daughter Becky, arrive in Schweich and we have a real birthday party for Max. ( causing the worst hangover Lucy has had in years).
Boat problems…Where do we start ?????? Boating may be fun but its not cheap… We have been fairly lucky with Kiwi Rose. After two winters of the starter batteries being buggered and having to buy new ones, this year H2O at St Jean de Losne quoted to install rocket switches, new batteries etc for only 1400 euros!!!… but a fellow boatie suggested we just buy new batteries and then totally disconnect them each winter.. so only 400 euros later and problem solved !!!
Then Max and his paranoia about the water pump breaking down has carried a spare for 2 years, well now I have a crowing husband as it broke down and stopped the other night.. The German Marina in Schweich came down within 2 hours and because we had the pump, they only charged us 25 euros for the 20mins it took the guy to install it. ( so efficient) AND, although I now have to grovel to Max, I am really pleased too because this one is silent which showed that the last one must have been struggling for ages.
But the big issue has been the smoking engine, and Wok & Sam will be aware we have been having issues for a year or 2. Anyway short story is we had the injectors taken out and cleaned last winter.. It seemed better for a while but then became temperamental again with starting and still smoking. So in Strasbourg we had the injectors taken out, checked, had to buy six new ones as 2 were dead and the others stuffed. Again set off down the Rhine, and after a few days the smoke was back and we seemed to have an increasing deisel/oil slick. End story is that we will be returning to Germany to winter, where these lovely efficient people will take the engine out of the boat,((UGH !! ), and rebore the pistons, rebuild the engine and pop it back.. Amazing what a compression test will show you and we are not sure why we never had one before. So we not going back to France for this winter but we will be just outside Trier in Germany.
Apart from that we are OK. !!!!!
On our way back to Metz we met up with ‘’Beau Jolie’’ , Sue & Robert, and Becky in Thionville.
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