High points

The “top” or high point of a canal is always an interesting and often a challenging place. This is often where the canal is at its steepest, so lock “staircases”, where one lock follows another and another in close proximity are common. There are often also tunnels; our longest so far having been our first - the Pouilly tunnel at the top of the Canal de Bourgogne was 3.333km long. The stretch of water between along the top of the canal is know as the dividing pound (a pound being the term used to describe the stretch of water between one lock and the next).

The Canal de la Marne au Rhin is unusual in that it has two dividing pounds - the Mauvages pound between the Meuse and Moselle valleys, which we have yet to encounter, and the Vosges pound between the Meurthe and the Zorn valleys, which we have just traversed in both directions on our trip from Nancy to Strasbourg and back. The Vosges pound is 33km long - that’s 33km without any locks. A luxury! It has a most spectacular example of canal engineering at each end. We approached the dividing pound from the Nancy end, which meant coming up the Rechicourt lock, the highest Freycinet gauge lock on the French waterways system. Freycinet was the chief waterways engineer in the late 19th century and he standardised the dimensions of the canals and the locks, and therefore the barges that could travel along them. The locks are 41m long and 5.5m wide. The Rechicourt lock is 15.4m high and when it was built, it replaced a flight of six locks. It is imposing to look at and is some five metres higher than any lock we’ve met to date.

We have, however, learnt not to fear big locks. In general they are gentle giants, where the water enters and leaves in such a way as to ensure a smooth ride up or down. The sign at the bottom of the lock announced a maximum wait of an hour and informed us that the locking process took 30 minutes each way. This confirmed that it would be a slow but probably comfortable trip. A trio of boats had just gone into the lock from the bottom as we approached, so we knew we had at least an hour to wait; looking at the size of the two boats in front of us in the queue, we thought it could well be longer. Both boats were approximately 15m long and our boat measures 11.6m (without the bathing platform on the back we think…). That’s more than 40m in length. But when the lock gates opened again, the VNF man in control of operations was sure he could fit us all in - and he did. But to say we were nose to tail would be understating the situation - we were actually overlapping in the lock, using not only every last centimetre of length but every one of width as well! Even with a smooth rise to the water, this was a most uncomfortable trip as C tried to keep the boat away from the stern of the boat in front and J used boathook and mop (which is less slippery) to keep our stern - and in particular our brand, spanking new platform - away from the formidable metal gates at the back of the lock. I can tell you that we were happy to get out of there and even happier at the prospect of 33 lock-free kilometres, even if they did include two tunnels!

At the other end of those 33km is the Arzwiller inclined plane, which must be the ultimate in luxury locking experiences! This can best be described as a boat lift. You drive your boat into what looks like a more or less normal lock, tie up and the whole section of the canal is raised or lowered by counter weights over a vertical height of 44.55m and a horizontal length of 128.65m. The inclined plane, which went into operation in 1969, replaced 17 standard locks. It used to take around 8 hours to negotiate those locks. The inclined plane takes around 25 minutes altogether, including the actual “journey” time of four and a half minutes. But the very best thing about it is that it is entirely stress-free for the boaties. Once you’ve tied up, all you have to do is sit back and admire the scenery or marvel at the masterpiece of engineering. You don’t even have to keep a hold on your ropes - magic!


It was no less magic on the return trip either - possibly more so. The evening before, we moored in the basin below the inclined plane, which is at the head of a beautiful valley. On a beautiful afternoon and evening, we were able to watch the inclined plane in action from this gorgeous spot. We went up the hill to visit the museum and souvenir shop - both something of a disappointment but as boaties, we at least didn’t have too pay for the visit. We did, however, get a small poster featuring a view of the inclined plane that was better than any photo we’d be able to take ourselves.

We were in the first group to go up the inclined plane in the morning and relished the idea of not having to negotiate our way up 17 locks, which is much harder than going down. A day later we were in front of the Rechicourt lock and again arrived in time to watch three boats enter the lock in front of us, which inevitably meant another wait of about an hour. We eyed up the boat in front and behind us and decided that as they were both about 13m in length, we would fit more comfortably into the lock with these two than was the case on our way up. However, it was a different VNF employee, in charge that day and obviously one with a different philosophy in these matters. He decided that two boats constituted a full lock and put us through with a luxurious amount of space and in complete comfort.
The impact of this decision was greater than would seem at first. The boat in front of us turned around soon afterwards and any boats behind us were now at least an hour behind. For the rest of the day we had the luxury of being able to pass through the locks on our own.