Into France

 Monday 20th June

Lovely sunny morning at a very pleasant campsite - a very attractive small town too.  After a bit of shopping, we did some more travelling and decided that we would like to spend our last few days in France.  So we stayed on the motorways via Stuttgart and Karlsruhe to Baden-Baden, then turned off over the Rhine into France.  Soon after that we arrived at a France Passion - this one not a vineyard, but a pottery just outside the village of Betschdorf and on the edge of the Foret de Haguenau.  The potter was busy pottering(?) and his wife was tending the veggie patch.  They welcomed us into their large back garden and Mme carried on gardening while we relaxed in the sunshine by their fruit trees!  After dinner we went across the road and strolled into the forest.  Through geocaching we knew that there was a trail of carved tree stumps to discover - some of them quite alarming in the evening light!

 
 

Tuesday 21st June

We are not usually ones for spending a lot of time (or money!) in shops, but we spotted an E.Leclerc in Soufflenheim and as we wanted to buy a baguette, we had a look around.  All the countries we've been visiting have been wonderful and we've eaten and drunk rather well in all of them, but none of them can equal France when it comes to the cheeses, the baguettes and the wine!!  We do particularly like the latter from the Alsace.  So we spent rather more than the 35c for bread!

We've come to a small campsite near Lutzelbourg, still in the Alsace, beside the Canal de la Marne au Rhin.  Many years ago, with the trailer tent and children(!), we had an overnight in Phalsbourg and visited Lutzelbourg in the evening to walk along the towpath.  I have always had a distinct memory of that walk around a bend in the canal as I was stung by a wasp! Ouch.  This afternoon we cycled along that stretch and it really is just as I remembered.  I will have a similar memory from earlier this holiday regarding an ant - but that is definitely not for the blog!  You may ask me for the story - but you must promise not to laugh.

 
 
 
We also cycled in the opposite direction to see the inclined plane which raises the canal by 44m replacing the original 17 locks of the old canal.  It was built in 1969, inspired by the only other inclined plane in existence at the time at Foxton, Leicestershire.  We arrived at a perfect moment when the tourist barge and a private boat had just entered it at the upper level, so watched the caisson come down and the boats being released into the lower level of the canal.  The back of the tourist boat was full of a school party who seemed very happy to shout and wave to us! 


 

We plan to continue to move slowly across northern France over the next 3 days - driving in the morning and exploring in the afternoon - possibly staying at a France Passion or an Aire tomorrow night.  So it could be a couple of days again before our next blog post.  We are booked to return to English shores next Saturday morning.