TAKING THE PLANE TO NANCY

Leaving Strasbourg on the next stage in our round trip, our boat would be “taking the plane”, not the flying kind but the Arzviller Inclined Plane which would lift her to the top of the Eastern Vosges, en route to Nancy. This marvellous device would be both literally and figuratively a high point of our cruise, something I had read about and was looking forward to experiencing.

But more on that later. Our aim for day one was to reach the historic town of Saverne, which guards the entrance to the Zorn valley, our route through the Vosges. It was 46km from Strasbourg, quite a long way for one day, but the route across the gentle slopes of Alsace’s wine growing area was not heavily locked and with no attractive looking intermediate stops, I felt that with an early start we should be fine.

The only problem was that, having failed to refuel on arrival, we really should do it before leaving. That meant waiting till the pumps opened at 09:00. In fact we took on only 290 litres, less than half a tank, meaning we were achieving 3.5mpg – good going for two big engines and