Top of the Vosges, June 7-9

It took us from 9 am until nearly 2 pm to clear the 19 locks to the top. On the way we passed the entrance to the Epinal branch canal. We decided we didn’t need to stop in Epinal again. We’ve been there twice, the last time two years ago (when we made the local paper) so we didn’t take the 3.5 km canal into town and just headed straight up the Golbey Staircase. 

The summit pound is about 10 k long and we had stopped on the western end both previous trips on the Vosges. Last time through we noted a nice new pontoon on the eastern end and when we rounded the corner and saw that it was empty, we decided to put it to use for a couple of days.

The tiny village of Les Forges is just across the bridge so we wandered over to see what there was. To our surprise, along with the restaurant that sold frog leg pizza (or maybe frog legs and pizza. We couldn’t decipher the sign.) there were a couple of boulangeries and a very nice local products store featuring wine, cheeses, yoghurt and a butcher counter. Since the village is just a couple of k from Epinal, a pretty good sized town, we assumed the shop serves the residents of this small suburb.

A customer contemplates the butcher’s counter.

We did some bike riding on Friday, traveling out to the other end of the summit pound just because, and then returned to the boat for a lazy afternoon and an evening meal on the terrace. There had been some thunderstorms around; we could see and hear them but hadn’t been rained on (yet!). It made for a very dramatic sky.

Saturday morning we were off, heading downhill. In fact, we’d be going downhill until we reached the Canal du Centre in about three weeks.