Tour de Grand Est - Stage 3 - Lorraine

We said good bye to Strasbourg, leaving on the bike route out of the city, passing the market square, where the Christmas Markets are held. 

Marc made us a great route. Quiet roads and some good rolling hills.  At 21 k we stopped at the top of a good climb and looked back to see the Cathedral. Such an impressive structure! 

The Vosges mountains were visible again, crossing them here will be much easier as they are more like hills now. 

As crazy as it sounds, we are not surprised to see a Stork now. This one was just on the shoulder of the road and barely felt the need to move as we passed by.  Quite remarkable to be so close to such a large bird. 

We enjoyed the last few villages in Alsace, before we crossed into Lorraine. They continue to be quaint and quiet, with flowers and timber houses. You will see the Mairie (top right) which is the town hall, and check out the little school house (bottom left). 

One little town had a vegetable stand. One could get a white asparagus or eggs...cauliflower (they looked fantastic) or a 10 pound bag of potatoes!  Indeed a shopped came and bought those potatoes as we stood and watched. 

I couldn't resister the asparagus. 

We rolled up and down hills today, it was cool and cloudy. Perfect riding weather for me. And the colours today seemed particularly impressive. 

We found a grocery store in Severne.  Marc went in to shop and I stayed out and made a new friend. He is hiking to Spain with his owner and a friend. ♥️🐾

Severne is very pretty, with cobblestones and hills, and the canal runs right through it. 

We stopped to watch a boat going through the locks at Severne. It was impressive, "Riverly" it said in the stern. So many bumpers, clearly designed for canals and locks. 

We started to follow the Canal du la Marne au Rhine here. 

We found another Riverly, filled with guys, chilling and smoking and generally looking like they were on a guys getaway. 

Oh, and then another Riverly, and yup you guess it, another. 

Turns out Riverly is the company who rents the canal boats and doing the locks is clearly a fun outing with friends and family. I stopped counting after seeing more than 20 of them. 

Of course boats doing locks have to be patient and we out-cycled all of them, and waved as we passed by. 

As we cycled along we saw a heron ahead on the path.  We didn't slow. It didn't move. We didn't slow, and honestly it let Marc get so close it was crazy. A big day for big birds 😉.

Some cool information about where we are:

The Marne-Rhine Canal was built from 1838 to 1853. The main problem it solved was going through the Vosges Mountains and especially climbing up its eastern side to its lower point, the Col de Saverne. This was first solved by means of a ladder of seventeen locks, allowing an overall level change of 44.55 metres over a distance of 4 kilometres. In 1969, these locks were replaced by the Saint-Louis-Arzviller inclined plane.

We have not seen this inclined plane, but we will cycle by it first thing tomorrow, stay tuned!!

Camping tonight in Plan Incline.  It is a fascinating stop with enormous rock faces just in the other side of the canal from us. 

Good night 

Sharing some roses I enjoyed seeing today.