Barging on ANJA

By now the Canal de la Marne- au- Rhin had almost reached its highest point on this Eastern part of the Canal. We passed from Alsace into Lorraine, all the time enjoying dense forests lining the canal. To reach the top, we entered the St Louis Arzviller inclined plane, the only one in Europe (and we can't imagine where else there would be one). This giant boat lift was built between 1964 and 1969 to replace 18 locks.

Basically it is like a huge bath tub which travels sideways up 108.65 metres with a 41% slope. The lock- keepers fill it with boats, close the guillotine gates at each end, then press a button to send the tub, water, boats and all, up the slope. Counterweights balance the load so that the mechanism to achieve the lift does not need to be very powerful. In our case we were so tightly packed into the lock that the doors could not be opened at the end because our bow- sprit was in the way. Penny had been rather wary and wondered if it would be better to walk up, but in the end decided to stay on board and found the experience quite an interesting one and very gentle.

After the lift there were still two one- way tunnels (one 2306 metres, one 475 metres) to be negotiated to take us through rather than over the mountain. All this was quite slow as this stretch of the canal was teeming with charter boats and with the one way system in the tunnels there was a long wait while the boats from the other direction came through both tunnels and the intervening canal. The total distance was four kilometres which took a minimum of half an hour at the 8kmh speed limit, in practice more as it was unlikely that most barges would travel fast in the darkness of the tunnel. As we were first boat in line we waited over an hour, for the boats travelling in our direction to get through before the boats coming towards us started their journey. A train of eight boats came through at once before we set off for our turn. We had a comfortable lunch. The family on the boat behind played badminton. At the other end of the second tunnel we had reached the peak of the canal and travelled along this plateau for 26 kilometres of delightful countryside, a mixture of forests, lakes and farming land before we reached our next lock, Reychicourt. Just as we had risen fast, we started our downward movement with a large drop of 15.385 metres, the highest Freycinet lock in France. Because so much water was used to operate this lock the lockkeepers waited until there were three boats inside before they allowed the lock to operate. We arrived to find that the boat ahead of us had already waited two hours because there were not three to come up. We only waited 40 minutes. A third boat, a Dutch cruiser, sped up and went straight in behind us, then annoyed us by overtaking Anja just before a narrow bridge, dashing into the next lock ahead of us, and closing the gates so that we could not go in. This is the worst behaviour we have yet encountered and is not typical of the behaviour of most canal users.

Pictures show:

War Memorial (Saverne)

1,200 year old chapel at Citadel Lutzelbourg

Views from top of hill to Lutzlebourg (3)

Our steep climb to Citadel

Tug previously used to haul barges through the tunnels

Inclined Plane

2.5km tunnel

Butterfly

16M lock

Saverne Palace

The Canal Marne au Rhin