9 August: Toul to Liverdun - 17,1kms, 5 locks, 1 lifting bridge.
10 August: Liverdun to Pont-a-Mousson - 26.3kms, 3 locks.
11 August: Pont-a-Mousson to Metz - 30,9kms, 2 locks.
After a most enjoyable stay in Toul it is time to hit the waterways once more so, in sparkling weather, we cruise down the wide waterway with an Australian cruiser Currigee keeping a discreet following distance.
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| Australians Ian & Kay aboard Currigee |
Some three hours later drive we turn into the tiny halte fluviale just before the town of Liverdun and are followed in by Ian and Kay, the owners of Currigee who are only stopping to have lunch and to take a quick walk to the town. A couple of hours later we are left on our own in the middle of a sunny glade. Bliss!
The next day is an easy one and with the port engine forward gear now mysteriously working perfectly, we continue past Liverdun and just after the big lock at Pompey turn north down the Moselle (or Little Meuse) canal arriving at the very smart Port de Plaisance in Pont a Mousson; minutes after making fast the rain teemed down for an hour
before clearing into a beautiful evening. We had read that Pont-a-Mousson was not a very interesting town so we didn't even bother to take off the bikes and go exploring, something we regretted the following day when passing the beautiful Premonstratensian abbey.
With only two large locks between ourselves and Metz and beautiful weather to boot we expected a leisurely but quick downstream cruise - but Murphy, in the form of a lock-keepers impromptu strike, held us up for four hours at the lock at Pagny-sur-Moselle. Pulling into a disused siding we are soon joined by a tiny yacht whose owner almost disappeared over the nearby weir and only saving himself by running aground into the mud. We hauled him around and helped him to secure up behind us and, after finding out the reason for the delay, shared a cool drink, a walk to the nearest supermarche and swopped a 10 liter bucket of grease (for some unearthly reason we bought four of these) for a large container of fresh blackberries. He was delighted!
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| Waiting for the lock to open |
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| Going up! How they squeezed three other commercials in with the huge Mistral is beyond belief. |
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| Tight fit. |
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| Dutch, German and little yacht. |
muscled past us so that they would be first into the port at Metz - when we arrived there they had taken a right turn to find a mooring in front of the clubhouse. There being nothing available, they turned and sped back toward the junction, doing about 10kph in a 3kph zone and, as we arrived there to turn right, the Dutch boat pushed in front of us splitting the two of them. As I was about to make a hard left turn so that I could reverse into an open spot the German boat Golden Years tried to push in front of us, nearly causing a collision. With a strong wind on our beam we made it into the tricky mooring thanks to some timeous help from another German couple ashore.
A nasty end to what had been a really nice day.
Metz is a great city with fabulous gardens around the port area, stunning views from our mooring,
a wonderful cathedral,
an imposing Germanic Imperial Quarter
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| The Neo-Romanesque station |
and the iconic Centre Pompidou-Metz museum.
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| 'Tsunami' sculpture |
The vibey cafe culture is perfect and we made our people-watching post a table in the Place Saint Jacques
We were even treated to a free light show in the gardens adjoining the port!
And it was engine service time too!
With many new experiences lying ahead and being unable to find anyone who could attend to our gearbox we decided, after three lovely days, to head south again toward our winter port Lagarde where we hoped we might find some engineering help.
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