Wasps in the warps and ants ‘n deck

So at last we set off for this year’s cruising season: a farewell to all our neighbours at Port Mansuy and off into the unknown. Before we left, Alex discovered a wasps’ nest under the spare rope up forward and in the absence of anti-wasp powder, picked the whole thing up with a boathook and hurled it onto the bank and thereafter decimated it!

Two days into our cruise up the Moselle and Louise suddenly finds ants crawling up the doorframe in the en-suite bathroom! On inspection they are all over the place: in the bedroom, under the carpet, around the skirting boards, up the walls, under the floor. HELP!

We are moored at the junction of the Canal des Vosges and the Nancy Embranchment and we decide to cycle the 15 kms to Nancy via the closed embranchment canal to get anti-ant powder and also the next guide for the canals we are about to experience. (We forgot to order it over our long winter lay-up!)

So out with the trusty bikes and off we go. We soon find out why the embranchment canal has been closed for the last couple of years, but can’t understand why it’s going to take another year to re-open it! There has been a landslip and 100m of canal has been filled in by the adjoining hillside. Even BW could tackle that and get the canal going in a couple of months! In Nancy we buy copious amounts of ‘fourmis’ killer powder and ‘honey pot’ killer traps, together with the map (not the favoured series, but beggars can’t be choosers), have lunch in Stanislas Square and finally wend our way back to the boat.

Then we tackle the ants: traps, powder, stamp, crush, kill for a couple of hours.

But the question remains: how did they get in? Alex keeps puzzling over this for some boringly long time. There were a few on the back deck but there is no way down from there except by the stairs, and there were none there. Then suddenly the possible solution comes to him. The previous night we had moored with some difficulty to a VNF ‘Press your zapper here’ sign, a tree at height to avoid the towpath and a stake hammered into the unyielding ground. We reckoned there would be little or no traffic till late morning as we had passed the point at which all nearby barges disgorged their scrap steel cargoes, and the locks were now back down to Freycinet size (39m x 5.10m). Of course as you would expect, a commercial Freycinet passed us going slowly (bless him) at 7.20am, just 20 minutes after the locks re-opened for the new day, and dragged the stake out. We didn’t see another boat of any sort until well into the afternoon1

This mooring was hard up against a lot of grass and vegetation nearly as high as the decks, and Alex realised that there was one route down to the underfloor that he hadn’t at first thought of. At the rear end of the main part of the boat, under the bedroom floor, is a bilge pump for the unimaginable prospect of inundation of water in the central part of Riccall. This pump is a centrifugal type and has no non-return valve in the outlet pipe, which exits high up near the stern. Alex’s conclusion is that the ants found this interesting hole in the side of the boat and crawled all the way down it, out past the pump impellor into the underfloor of the bedroom and thence up to everywhere else!

As this is a boat and everything is supposed to be waterproof (and therefore, ant-proof) this is the only explanation we can arrive at, and when Alex looked in the outlet hole, there was an ANT in it!! It’s not nice being invaded though, and while the various anti-ant stuffs do their stuff we will sleep in the guest bedroom up forward.

On the plus side, the bike ride was fun: the embranchment canal is lovely and Nancy, particularly Stanislas Square, is brilliant.

We set off, reluctantly, from our mooring and proceeded on our way. The first lock was fine but somewhere at the next lock we failed to see the zapper post which meant that the lock couldn’t operate. Louise disembarked and walked back down the towpath pressing the button every 10 metres or so still unable to visually locate the sign post. Suddenly the green light on the lock was illuminated and the lock began to operate. Alex got on the walkie-talkie and let Louse know she had (somehow) set it off! We still have no idea where the receiving post was but at last we are on our way.

Half an hour later it is time for Louise’s morning cup of coffee for which everything stops, and by chance a mooring is in sight, so we moor up. It happens to be such an idyllic spot that we decide to stay on for that night as well, with an interesting bike ride after lunch to boot. There are a few weekend cottages around but the loudest noise is from the local birdsong: the sun shines and we enjoy supper on the back deck in the cooling setting rays.

Charmes is our next stop and charming it ain’t! But to stock up at the local supermarket we pay our €7 for mooring and electricity and moor adjacent to the hoards of campervans which have congregated at this spot – obviously a popular road rest.

The following day, we have our hopes set on a mooring at Nomexy/Chatel, which according to our DBA information, has a guided tour of a local castle, much of which is below ground! We arrive at the first appointed time of 3 pm to be met by an elderly couple who are in the process of opening up for business.

The lady speaks quite good English, which is encouraging, but suddenly we discover we have both left our money on the boat! Sacré bleu! But Madame says, ‘No problem – pay after the tour’. So Alex, Louise and a decrepit Frenchman start being shown the sights by Madame. We begin in the museum artefacts display rooms and everything is explained in English (short version) and French (minute detail) for about 45 minutes. How long is this tour? Then we go outside and start looking at some of the actual remains: diving into rooms here, down precipitous stairs there, in and out of everywhere. It is huge site and it has been excavated by many thousands of international archaeologists amidst and amongst the later private dwellings. Our fellow tourist is only about 65 but is less steady on his feet than our guide who turns out to be 80! Yes, actually 80 years old. So they help each other up and down the steep steps with Louise and Alex chipping in where appropriate.

At 5.30 we are joined by 3 other tourists who had missed the start of the tour, but eventually sometime after 6 it was all over.

Our guide had been on her feet, explaining everything in French and English for over 3 hours, and WE were exhausted!!! Alex congratulated her on a command performance, left a huge (for him) tip and even bought a postcard, which Louise had particularly liked.

The castle dated back to the 11th century and had been added to over the centuries. It has been a very important point in the history of the region as it was at the crossroads of early Roman and later French, Prussian, Dutch and German major arteries. It was an important stronghold in the region and our guide had been involved in its excavation almost from the beginning in the 1970s.

She LIVED that castle - both for it, in it and around it. It was her life. She was even hoping for the local hospital to be demolished so she could unearth more of the remains underneath it – at 80! She herself had removed tons of rubbish that had been used to fill in the fabric of the castle interior at the behest of Louis 15th, who had felt it was a stronghold against his power, so he annihilated it. She pointed to a rather scruffy row of garage type buildings, rejoicing that they were about to be demolished and she would be excavating further parts of the castle as soon as they had disappeared!

Her whole family were involved: she, her husband, her children and her grandchildren were all a part of it. Incredible! What a bizarre scene!

The next day, we visited the local 15th Century church in the same village. Alex had seen a man enter, so we knew the church was open. As we stood at the back however, we could see and hear a couple of fellows near the altar chatting away 19 to the dozen. Alex decided to go up to have a closer look at the altar area, but as he approached the two men, he noticed a woman at one of the side chapels in floods of tears. He beat a hasty retreat and we sat quietly at the back, not sure quite what to do. A few minutes later one of the of the men escorted the woman (still sobbing) from the premises and the other man approached us and introduced himself. He was clearly the Father or ‘curate’, and he gave us a brief history of the church, and then we all came out and he locked the door behind us! But why all the tears? What had happened? We felt we had stumbled into some significant personal tragedy and hoped we hadn’t made things worse by our presence. But the young woman’s misfortune was our good luck – a chance to look inside what would normally have been a locked church!