The distance between Nancy and Strasbourg by canal is 175 km. Alsace is separated from Lorraine by the Vosges Mountains and somehow a canal has to get through that barrier. It does it by fantastic feats of engineering as we discovered.
Nancy is a lovely city with perhaps its crowning glory being its main square the Place Stanilas. With Gold plated wrought iron and lovely buildings, it glints in the early morning sun.
The Canal Marne au Rhine connects the two cities and meanders, once out of Nancy, through rolling hills and pleasant countryside.There are many locks (around 80) and that did my shoulder no good at all even though Wendy tried to take on more of the load. 
We made slow and steady progress from Nancy and for the first time we encountered fleets of hire boats which steadily grew in number until they comprised over 90% of all the boats on the canal. The locks are automated with the ‘garage door opener’ and except for a lock which had gone AWOL and held us up for a while it was easy cruising.
Two days sailing from Nancy the canal reaches the summit pound. To get up to it we needed to go up the highest lock in France at 15.4m
With floating bollards it is easier than smaller locks as you don’t need to tie up and then keep undoing and retying as you move up.
You go in through a tiny sliding door at the bottom into a huge cavern. At the top we were on a 30km summit pound and we pushed on until we hit the bottom of the Vosges. There we dived underground through two huge tunnels and emerged halfway up a mountain in Alsace. The canal is carved out of solid rock and is high above the valley of the Zorn. At the end of the canal everything stops. There before you is a huge inclined plane. You just drive in
and ten minutes later you are almost 50m lower in the Zorn valley. The steep sides of the valley are heavily wooded and it is very quiet and remote until you get to the village of Lutzelbourg where we spent a couple of nights.
We dined out on Alsace Specialities like Blue Trout and Wild Boar pate at the Hotel des Vosges and rested after the locks we had been through.
Then we continued and emerged out of the wooded valley into the plain of Alsace and headed towards Saverne.
There were lots of hire boats now, most of which were hosting Germans. And most of the boats had large numbers of men only German crew, whose chief pleasure in life was drinking beer from morning to night. As we went through the lock in Saverne with such a party they turned up their cd player and all ten of them started singing Deutschland Uber Alles at the top of their voices, and then as if realising where they were, switched to the Marseillaise as they left the lock. Still they didn’t make too much noise at the Port where we all stayed, contenting themselves with playing boules all night. We had a lovely mooring in Saverne right opposite the magnificent Chateau des Rohans. We found a good large supermarket and did a big shop. There were two other NZ boats in Saverne. We travel the length of Europe by boat, and hardly ever see a NZ boat and then we hit 2 others all in one place.
The tow path besides the canal is a favourite with cyclists (again 90% German Speaking judging by our sampling of conversations. You can cycle on paved paths from Strasbourg to the Arzviller Inclined Plane stopping at lovely hotels along the way. I guess its about 90km, so about two days up and two days back. Very very popular!
We had two broken down locks between Saverne and Strasbourg which held us up as the ‘mobile lock keepers’ had to drive to us and sort out the problem. Whilst waiting I stripped down the throttle control which had been sticking and refusing to go into neutral, found the problem, and that was another problem crossed of the list.
We arrived in Strasbourg at lunchtime and took the last place at the Strasbourg Port du Plaisance. After a bite to eat we walked into the old town and saw the quite magnificent cathedral.
The facade has to be seen to be believed and it is easily the best cathedral we have seen to date. It is so big that with our camera it was impossible to photograph the whole front. We wandered around the quaint streets with houses 800 years old, and arrived at the area called Petite France which has some of the oldest buildings in France. Strasbourg is traversed by many canals and branches of the River Ill and tour boats abound everywhere.
After a week of virtually perfect weather, the late afternoon produced light rain and as we finish this blog, we have to decide whether to head down the Rhine tomorrow or leave it for another day. The Rhine in this area is a monster which has a current of 10km/hr, and huge traffic day and night. Visibility is important and quite frankly it is the the part of the trip which has us a bit anxious. Two days sailing downstream will bring us the the entrance to the tributary of the River Rhine called the River Neckar. We must turn here in the fierce current and then head up 200km of much quieter and very beautiful scenery past castles and vineyards until we get to (or close to) Stuttgart. But the story of that must wait another day. For now we have travelled 1000km since we left, used 550 litres of diesel (1 euro a litre) passed through 170 locks, 5 tunnels and an inclined plane and stand poised to inch out onto the River Rhine and be hurtled like a roller coaster down a turbulent torrent. Let us see what tomorrow brings …
