Autumn round trip

Toul, Germany, Luxembourg, Toul: Part Two Germany to France


River Saar, River Moselle

Now we are in Germany. The last of the locks which operated with our French zapper is half a kilometre into Germany and here we handed it in.

The lock keeper was a heavy-set man. Alex said, ‘Bonjour, or should I say guten Morgen?’ Not a glimmer of a smile, just took the zapper and turned on his heel heading back upstairs. Oh dear! Does this herald how things are going to be? We got to Saarbrucken and found the moorings in total disarray as, we learned later, they are being re-developed! It didn’t say that anywhere of course. We stopped at the first available spot (reserved for something else according to our interpretation of the signage – but what?) while we sussed the scene. Alex walked to the official ‘sport boat’ moorings which were full of museum boats, trip boats and hotel boats and no room even for little us.

Later Alex talked to the owner of one of the party boats – Gunter. He is an ex-commercial bargee who now takes party trips of up to 40 on one or both of his restaurant boats. He was very helpful – explaining about the redevelopment and told us we were OK where we were. We went into town looking for a chart of the River Saar in Germany and the River Moselle in Germany which we were lacking. No luck. Gunter lent us a couple of rather ancient, but workable charts, which we photocopied. So kind! We returned the charts with a present of Yorkshire tea and a load of information on hiring narrowboats in England which Gunter has a craving to do to see the English canals.

We wished we were staying longer so we could invite him and his girlfriend for drinks but we felt the need to press on. We asked him to give us a sentence in German that we could use to announce our arrival at each German lock, but as well as doing that he rang the lockkeeper at the next lock to warn him when we would be arriving. So the first lock was fine, and the second one OK, but thereafter it has been decidedly difficult with our lack of German and the lockkeepers’ lack of English or even French (except in one case). So there have been a couple of misunderstandings. The signage is very difficult to interpret even with a dictionary, partly because the kind of words we need on the waterways are not in our dictionary, but mainly because the Germans run all the words into one great long one (like the Welsh), so first you have to decide where one bit might end and the next begin, before you can try to look each bit up separately, then put it all back together again! Added to that, the humour and smiles we are used to in France, Belgium and Holland are definitely lacking here.

When we got to Saarlouis we looked briefly at a 30m floating pontoon but decided to view the other downriver mooring area first – 100m of it supposedly. But it was impossible for us. Intended for peniches at twice our length and shallow and rocky for at least 1.5m from the bank, before enough depth for us, and we have nothing suitable to hold ourselves off with. So we went back up to the pontoon, whereupon the captain of the trip boat River Lady, moored on the next pontoon, gesticulated emphatically that we couldn’t moor there. But our book and the signage on the pontoon indicted that we could. So we did another 360 degree turn, moored up on it anyway and Louise went off to enquire of the captain what the problem was. Apparently, he felt we were too big and heavy for the pontoon (probably right there) but told us we could spend a night on the other empty trip boat pontoon. Phew!

We had a cycle trip round Saarlouis which had the remains of an incredibly intricate fortification system which were interesting, and a cathedral rebuilt in concrete in 1960s style behind its still-standing frontage (18thc) which was just awful. We found ourselves castigating the Germans for this dreadful re-building until we remembered that it was probably us– the Allies – who had caused the destruction in the first place! Oops.

We motored on and entered the jewel in the River Saar’s crown – the Mettlach meander, a 5km hairpin bend where the river has cut a deep path through and around the forested mountains – quite spectacular. After an hour’s delay due we think to a misunderstanding on the lockkeeper’s part about our intention of passing through his lock, we arrived at Mettlach, the home of Villeroy and Boch, the porcelain manufacturers known world-wide for wonderful crockery, decorative items and sanitary ware! As we arrived we saw that the River Lady trip boat was moving off the last remaining space on the quay. Alex waved and mimed, “Is it OK for us to moor in the slot you have just left?” “Yes, OK for you”. Wonderful.

The following morning we saw that a huge 110m hotel barge had arrived at some point in the late evening and had had to tack on to the other end of the moorings, ending up half under a bridge. We felt rather guilty, worried that maybe we shouldn’t after all be moored where we were. This feeling is to dog us throughout out time in Germany, as the very next day the same hotel boat arrives at our mooring at Saarburg and moors within one metre of us to get his 110m onto the rest of the wharf.

We cycled into Saarburg town to view the castle on the hill and the waterfall which cascades down between the houses and operates the water wheels below. We had arrived on the day of the town’s Oktoberfest – a huge street market and eating bonanza which was fun to look round. When we got back to Riccall the hotel barge had left and a smaller one had arrived. In due course it too left, and we were alone with only a relatively small hotel barge until about 7.30pm, when a huge commercial hooted his horn as he nudged up close to moor up, in the dusk and heavy drizzle. Alex immediately went out to ask if we needed to move but signals indicated, “No, there is just room, and thanks for taking the ropes to the bollards”.

The commercial left at 6 am and we headed down to the end of the Saar and turned up the Moselle. By midday we had left German waters and entered Luxembourg. The first immediate benefit was that the signage was now in French as well as German so we could understand it. The second was that there were now places which indicated we could moor at them. Well, what they actually said was, “No mooring, except when the trip boat is not here. For times when you can moor see the list below” and underneath, where the timetable would normally be, were the wonderful words “Pas de restriction” – an end of season plus.

We found a nice place to stop at Remich where there is an hourly bus service to Luxembourg city so became serious tourists for the day. What a joy to see Luxembourg. Go if you possibly can. The city itself is lovely architecturally and historically but its great claim has to be its site – on a promontory with a deep, deep gorge cutting the city in two. We went for the obligatory ‘petit train’ ride around the city to get an overview, with earphone commentary in English, had lunch in one of the main squares in the cool sunshine, spent ages investigating the labyrinth of passages inside the massive walls of the 18th century defences, and wandered around the valley gardens and up and down the Spanish fortifications (16th century). We finished up with tea outside in a different square, still in sunshine, and caught the express bus back to Remich. A lovely day in a wonderful city.

We are now seriously en route back to our base in Toul but we have one more important tourist stop to make on the way – Metz. It is said to be an ‘astonishing’ city. We shall see.