June 8th.
Stuck in Schweich!!!! Raining but we are still happily drinking.
Well this says it all!!.
All our emails between our boating friends talk about rain, rising river levels,people stuck unable to head on to rivers, or even canals, boats stuck from incidental broken locks and of course the Annual maintenance of the locks on the Moselle river being closed the first week of June.
In hind sight that turned out not to matter as with the rains the river is running extremely high in flood, and it would be too too dangerous to go on anyway.
We have heard from Tex and Anthea who set off from St Jean 2 weeks ago, who are now surfing down the Rhone towards the Med, and we don’t envy them….well maybe but only because they will be in better weather.!!!
As we are stuck, we decided to go for a tiki tour to visit friends. Started with Austin & Susie (Oz friends) who headed off as the rains started to about 3 hrs up river from us. They were moored on a pontoon on the Moselle River, and talk about being continually hit by passing logs and tree branches ( quite frightening at night)
When we passed this weir last September it was just a little trickle of water just wetting the concrete to this……………………………………..
So A & S were not going to head up that yet and neither are we. But how long will we have to wait???
So driving on to Toul, we are still googling to look at flights to Marrakech with Easyjet to run away and find nice weather. We are also having to juggle dates and times to start off on our way as Chris & Judy Ingram arrive from NZ on the 20th June. In fact as mentioned later in this blog,it’s lucky we didn’t decide to flee!!!
TOUL.
We end up staying 3 nights in a lovely hotel we have been in before just by the Marina. Jan & Bill feed us and card games commenced. Unfortunately the boys took us girls by storm.!!!!!!!
View from hotel room window, the Marina and the Cathedral lit up..
Jan again suffering the removal of her toilet by Bill, and has decided that maybe they could just leave it here on the front deck.
But she is not sure her balance would be good enough!!
Left Toul to drive past the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane on the Marne-Rhine Canal on our way back to Schweich, as we will not be going that way for another few years. There used to be 17 locks rising 45ms over 4 kms, but used a lot of water and a whole day, and in 1969 the lift was built.
The boats go into a big bath tub, 41.5m long and 5.5m wide and 3.2m deep. It rises 44.5m on a 41% slope. We timed the decent at 3mins. its quite impressive.
Now as we drove through Saarsbrucken in Germany going back to Schweich, the short story is that the car died.
OUR breakdown truck!!! We have been very very lucky as we broke down in a carpark in town at 4.30pm. A phone call to our insurance company (we have extended RAC cover for Europe) and a truck arrives within 40 mins.
He immediately finds its our alternator and we follow him to a Toyota Dealer 3 mins away. They take the car, and the lovely towtruck guy even books us into a local hotel and drives us there.
You can’t wish for better or more fantastic service, we have been so so impressed.
This morning the RAC France have phoned us to say the part has been ordered and the car will be ready tomorrow afternoon…..so we wait in rainy Saarsbrucken with just enough clean clothes, rain jackets and an umbrella.
This is what’s happening down stream from us from Schweich, on the Moselle River .
The MOSELLE River at Cochem last summer. You can see Kiwi Rose tucked in behind the wall in the marina with the blue canopy.
A photo taken from the same place by Austin & Susie who took a train trip to visit a few days ago. Their photo on the right, shows the water over the marina wall and nearly up over the road. And the walk way along the left side of the river has disappeared.
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