OTHER PURSUITS

It's that time of year that we say goodbye to Soraya and navigation for a while. Strasbourg has been great and there will be a lot more to report in the winter when we return after our Autumn navigation for hivernage. A couple of photographs of our last couple of days there in searing heat here in the east.

Margaret browsing the free book exchange.

This 'Livres en Liberté' is the largest we have come across so far, with a good selection of books in French, German and English. Running in the park yesterday morning I came across this turtle walking across the road. Not a good idea. After consultation with a fellow runner we decided to hasten it's passage over the road, for potentially its own good. I picked it up carefully and yes it did try to urinate over me. I used to have a tortoise as a child so was aware of the possibility. We returned it to the lake edge. A few seconds later it re-entered the water and slowly swam off.

Close up of a turtle, as the previous blog post.

Passing by the European Parliment and the Union Jack is still flying! Thought they may have taken it down or lowered it to half mast. Have we always been at the end or is that space reserved for leavers?

A Union of flags.

No more blog posts until we return to Strasbourg and commence our Autumn navigation in mid September. Off on the TGV to Paris and Eurostar to London to meet Martyn and Charlie at The Plum and Spilt Milk? Have a great summer. Did I mention the whirlwind? Well as the saying goes, more of that later.

DID I MENTION THE TURTLES!

No wonder there is a population explosion with this many storks around. There must be a lot of baby deliveries. Joking aside we are in stork land (not the butter substitute) and it's lovely to see them flying overhead. At the Orangerie Park in Strasbourg they are virtually endemic, wandering around, nesting on the Orangerie. It's unusual to get so close to them.

Nesting on the chimney tops.

When the stork in the sky flew over there was a almighty commotion from the birds in the nest. There were parents in the nest and a young stork. Who knows what the angst is?

Stork wandering.

Storks aside we live in and among .....'bald as a coot'. Yes coots. We don't feel they are very good parents. Their very young chicks literally fall out of their nest off the propeller of an adjacent boat. Parents there to guide, protect? Not really. We've been monitoring their progress. The parenting skills seem to be '0'. They come out from the nest as a family but soon loose each other. The parents go off foraging for food independently and the young are left. All of a sudden chaos breaks out. Both parents have realised they have no idea where the chicks are. You can see/hear the angst. 'I left the kids with you!' 'No I thought you were looking after them'. 'No I said......' OK where are they? Lots of calling and they are usually found. The other day after this normal exchange a massive commotion occurred. A black backed gull came from nowhere and plucked up one of the chicks for lunch!! Margaret was out. I relayed the story. 'Well why didn't you throw stones at the gull?' Unfortunately we were fresh out of stones on Soraya! Good news there are still two coot chicks left. I did not realise they are 'ginger tossers' like myself. Actually they look like a couple of hairy conkers. They are very sweet.

The remaining 2.

Going back to the blog post title, we were in the Orangerie Park and in the lake were turtles, lots. You didn't see them at first. The more you looked the more you saw. This was amongst rowing boats. All very European. More of that later, we are in the 'Capitale Européenne'.

Afternoon tea, a beech leaf.

PVs

PVs or Photovoltaic Cells. As we have mentioned before we installed them last winter. So what's the verdict? They are excellent, they have exceeded our expectations. We have 4x300 watt panels potentially giving out 1.2kw. They are a new generation of panels that do not need direct sunlight only a bright sky. For the sceptics 'Have we had 1.2Kw?' We do have on a regular basis over a kilowatt output and I have seen for a short period 1.18Kw. So I would say yes, after all I'm not watching the meters all of the time.

Minimum visual impact of the 4 panels on the wheelhouse roof.

Soraya is a gas free barge, we are all electric. Most barges use gas for cooking and often hot water. All our energy requirements are electric. This is good from the point of view we don't have a gas explosion risk. The difficulty is that all our electrical power input to the batteries has to come direct from the engine, generator, shore or solar. After the installation of the PVs we can navigate, stop wherever we want and never have to worry about power. We were in Metz recently for 2 weeks with no electrical power from the engine which we gain if we are navigating and no shore power yet we still had a full 100% battery charge due in part to excellent weather. We have not had any shore power for over 2 months and our average battery level is from 90-100% daily, despite running a washing machine, dish washer,  boiler for hot water, fans and all the other paraphernalia of modern living. It's great and free of running cost, no CO2 and totally silent. Obviously we did have the purchase cost. This is constantly being recovered as we do not often need to pay mooring or electricity fees as we do not need power. Pay back. Difficult to estimate perhaps 3 years, then we'll be euros in.

STRASBOURG

We finally made it to Strasbourg. We tried a couple of years ago, however, the Arzviller Inclined Plane (see previous blog post) was out of order so no route from the west. This year all good. We have negotiated a great mooring close to the town centre. In fact the city and moorings are so good we have booked Soraya in for this coming winter. Trips to Strasbourg anyone? Only 1hr 50mins from Paris on TGV.

Strasbourg is a beautiful city with lots of old timber framed buildings, cobbled streets, as a contrast there are many very modern buildings, fortunately not diminishing the historic areas. A few areas are rather too full of tourists for my liking and of course being on the border with Germany if you are not French you are assumed to be German. There are plenty of areas away from the tourists and it is the home of flammekueche (tarte flambée) and of course Fischer beer. I can see a brewery trip coming up. Can't be all bad.

One of the many, many waterways.

The waterways dissect Strasbourg, you always seem to be going over another river/canal or have a waterside view. We are not allowed to take Soraya into the touristy heart of the town it is reserved for tour boats only. In fact all the bridges are too low and there is quite a flow on the river L'Ill so I'm happy to be moored off centre.

A bit of flower posing!

There is plenty of bimbling to be done with fascinating little streets and impasses. Lots of coffee shops, bars and restaurants selling flammekueche. 

Even my Brompton is getting into the pretty mood.

A great aspect of the city is The European Parliament, joking aside, is the cycle network. Every road has dedicated cycle lanes, most two way as shown below. As the city is flat it's just great for getting around on a bike. Seriously it is the best city cycling network that we have come across. Did I mention the flammekueche?

Margaret on one of the many quality cycle routes.