Rangali Adventures: A week in Strasbourg

We have spent a very enjoyable and restful week in Strasbourg at the Koejac Marina. It's not that convenient for food shopping but it is an easy 10 minute walk to the Winston Churchill tram stop and a 10 minute tram journey to the centre of the city. We love the trams, they are so easy to hop on and off.

We have had some heavy rainfall, and a few big thunderstorms, this week but we've been lucky not to have been too inconvenienced by it. The canals desperately need the rain so we haven't minded.

We heard some bad news on Friday from John and Jenny on Le Koala, which could cause us some problems. Our route out of Strasbourg is via the Canal du Marne au Rhin and we have to go up the Arzillier Incline Plane. This was out of action last year for about 6 months, it only re opened in May this year. We have heard that it has another mechanical problem and is closed again. We spoke to the VNF office today and they said it could be 2-3 weeks before its operational again, they assured us it wasn't such a serious problem as last year. But we gather from speaking to the captianaire of Koejac Marina this afternoon that there was a big VNF meeting about it today so goodness knows what the outcome of that will be! Le Koala also spoke to the VNF at Saverne, nearer the Incline Plane and they were told they'd know more by Thursday this week.

We don't want to go back via the Grand Canal d'Alsace (The Rhine) as we would be going against the current and it would take us much longer. (The Rhine is on yellow alert after the rain we've had this week, so the current is too strong for us at the moment.) We also heard from the captainaire that we were lucky not to have been stopped and checked by the river police on the Rhine so if we have to go back that way we would take a pilot. We've been given details and contacted a pilot who moors here at the marina, so we have a fall back plan.

So for the time being though, we are going to very slowly make our way to the Arzillier Incline Plane. We might as well go and have a look at it! We will keep our fingers crossed that the problem can be fixed within 2-3 weeks.