notamermaid

Repeat cruisers on the Moselle, nice. Good to read that you are enjoying the river landscape. I see you are docked in Bernkastel-Kues at the end of town. I did not know there was a landing stage there. But I was only in town for two hours. notamermaid

Never thought about that. Could be interesting. And that person would be rather busy, I mean if you wanted to go to all the ports in Europe yourself. I wonder how many there are? Cruisemapper has a very long list but has by no means covered them all. There are 45 on the Rhine alone according to the website, but I can already see two missing. It says they have overall 680 river ports listed, I cannot tell how many of those are in Europe. Have not got much time, but if someone offered me a ton of cash I might do Germany and a few more places... One can but dream. I sooo need a holiday away from the mad crowds that are around me these days, I long for the quite days in a Northern England village pub. But first I need to do extra shifts at work, it is tourist season after all. And then I may head to a German village in the distant hills. Or if I get really desperate join the French in a lake resort in what they call Grand Est these days. Incidentally, I have read about the renewed stronger thoughts of the Alsatians (the people, not the dogs) that they may be happier if they cut ties with Grand Est or Paris government altogether. My, could they afford it and not just because of all the river cruisers... It would be another chapter in the story of this region that started many centuries ago. notamermaid

I reckon the signals are too weak in the area. Among hills - just like on the Rhine and the Danube - the terrestrial signals "disappear" from the tracking websites. In the Rhine Gorge, usually ship signals are stuck around Bingen or just downstream from Osterspai, unless they are lost completely from the online map. This is what I mean: notamermaid

The forecast on Friday suggested levels around 685cm for today, so how has it been? The river actually stayed a bit below that and Maxau gauge is now at 676cm. During this week the level will fall, possibly a bit below flood vigilance. Lake Constance is a bit better as well, but of course still high. It will not return to a normal level any time soon. In reaction to rain forecast for later in the week it may rise again. The rise will very likely show significantly in the gauge at Maxau and may return to, well, where it is now. On Friday, the submarine U17 sailed a little downstream on the river - was pushed that is - and turned into the Neckar. You can read about it here, in German only: https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/mannheim/u-boot-transport-wassertransport-100.html and this is the last leg of its journey to the museum in Sinsheim: https://u17.technik-museum.de/en/u17-live/ The Technik Museum in Speyer is now a popular excursion for river cruisers. I have been to the other part of it at Sinsheim and I must say that it is very impressive. notamermaid

The Neckar river is currently seeing a very special cargo. The submarine U17 was transported along the Rhine last year. Now it is being pushed up the Neckar (after a short journey down the Rhine again) and today has made the bottle neck - it has passed under the bridge at Heidelberg. For that it needed to turned and laid on its side. This is the German report: https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/mannheim/u-boot-transport-wassertransport-100.html notamermaid

Let us have a look at what the river did in June. We know of course that the month started with exceptional flooding. It rained a lot all over the South of Germany, so the flooding already happened way up the river, the snow melt from the Alpine regions contributed a smaller amount. Of the Southern tributaries we for example have seen the Lech rising not as much as the Upper Danube and the Iller, which is still close to Lake Constance. Long before the Main Danube Canal ends at Kelheim the river is carrying a very high volume of water. At that point it still has not received the waters from the Regen river. This is Ingolstadt, upstream from Kelheim: The pattern is still basically visible after the Regen has joined the Danube. At Pfelling it looks like this: While the rise looks impressive at Ingolstadt already, at Pfelling the impact becomes clearer as here on the navigable river we can put it into context. The HSW line (on paper) triggers the river traffic ban. The situation was extreme. With a lock and two more rivers joining the graph at Passau looks a little different but as extreme: notamermaid

Good to hear. Hope you had a great time. I was just about to post that the levels continue to be high but even the latest rain has not brought the levels up to anything of concern at Passau. 🙂The river is going down again already there and is currently at 607cm. notamermaid

I do not know what VIA is but it sounds like the greater London suburban trains I took over 20 years ago... ICE is very good, no swaying as far as I can tell, except when entering an area with many points, like Cologne main station, and even that is bearable. TGV is according to hearsay even better. Very smooth, the acceleration to the enormous speed can be felt, like in a fast car. What can happen is that trains move with the curve but that is again smooth and the dedicated high speed tracks tend to have few narrow curves. But even the standard carriages on the main lines are usually so modern that I would not call it a problem. But that only you can assess. I find flying and being on ocean waters (which I can only do with medication) far worse than any train I have been on. notamermaid

Just to give all this a bit more context and detail on a map, here is the screenshot taken from marinetraffic.com some minutes before writing this post: The meandering Seine is showing the SS Joie de Vivre sailing downstream. The Jane Austen is docked at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. The name Conflans says it - the confluence. You can see all the different coloured dots at the harbour areas of the town both on the Seine and "round the corner" on the Oise. Apparently some of these have permanent berths as converted floating homes/house boats. Further up on the Oise we see more green dots (barges). On the Seine sailing downstream some distance before the confluence is the Zwaantje. This is a passenger ship and indeed one with cabins (signal is from earlier today, so fainter it its colour). She is one of the few converted barges than can and do sail up the Oise and through the canals all the way to the Scheldt and the Rhine river basin. notamermaid

Avalon Waterways sounds a good fit for you. May I suggest that additionally you could have a look at Viva Cruises. They are German and quite modern. The cruises are all bilingual as far as I know. Generally, for a first timer the Rhine and Danube are good, there are many castles but you can do other things as well. Tons of hills to climb with great vistas, fascinating museums, etc. The main thing you need to be aware of is the lack of entertainment on board. And you usually sail at night so the focus is very much on the ports. I am linking you to a ship page: https://www.viva-*****/en/ships/ms-viva-enjoy If you prefer a bit more space check the size of ship to passenger count of the itineraries that interest you, it can make a difference to how you feel in the dining room and lounge. notamermaid

As a side note - part of the promotion is to take loads off the roads onto barges and statistics in general prove people right in that. The French decide to built a "giant new" canal in the countryside (I guess with a few complaints) and the Germans struggle to agree that 20cm more depth in the Middle Rhine valley would take loads of load and strain off the roads in the area in low water and be good for business. notamermaid

I have been specifically asked about headroom at the bridges. Some more information on that can be obtained from the following pdf file. This is the navigation channel of the Rhine with its structure and dimensions. You can see confirmed that there is no low bridge that would impede sailing like we often see it on the Danube in Germany. May I draw your attention to the kilometres 508 to 557. It says that the channel depth is 1.90m [they have left in the German decimal comma, rather than change it to English decimal point]. This is the shallow area around Kaub which I always refer to in low water. https://ccr-zkr.org/files/documents/infovoienavigable/Wasserstrassenprofil_en.pdf notamermaid

Fußball!! ⚽ 🍻 Germany lost yesterday, a hard fight, tight result. Commiserations to Switzerland. How did England manage to win in penalty shootouts!? It is an odd summer - nothing to do with football - as it has been relatively cool this week. And the Rhine and Danube are still high. I again will not be going to England during the summer. Things just do not work out sometimes. I am somewhat sad but I will be having a proper holiday away from work, just not be travelling far. Have a good weekend what ever you are doing folks. notamermaid

Reading all those, now that is determination. The adaptation with Michael York is ingrained in my childhood/teenage memories. I am tempted to watch this modern adaptation in the original French, I would understand little, but quite frankly with all those costumes and historical backdrops the visual delight may make up for the "I get very little of the plot" problem. I think one little place on the Oise is frequently visited on excursions - Auvers-sur-Oise. Has something to do with guys thinking "hey, I like that, will paint it". Especially Vincent van Gogh. notamermaid

The weather report and the computer modelling turned more favourable along the Rhine yesterday and I have the feeling that this may be due to the clouds having moved more towards the Danube basin. For a fact we can say that it is raining in the Southeast of Germany now, with the rain having swept in from direction France/Switzerland, so earlier in the day we saw rain in the Southwest with little North of the Main river and intensifying as the evening progresses over Bavaria. This means that the water levels may rise noticeably downstream from Straubing from what the radar and computer calculations suggest. notamermaid

Sorry that you missed that. What a great excursion with Scenic, easily doable from Conflans Saint Honorine (confluence of the Oise with the Seine). It says online that they filmed until June 2022, back to back, i.e. the sequel* is already done. 😊 A French-European production. *technically this may be more of a two-part saga notamermaid

What intrigued me about the itinerary of the MS Fluvius - and is also a stop/visit on the itinerary of the MS Raymond - is the Chateau Chantilly. I recognized it as "the one of the crème". So I had a closer look... https://www.chantilly-senlis-tourisme.com/en/the-destination/creme-chantilly-et-cotignac-des-arenes/ I mean, Versailles is nice and all that I assume, never been. But this is what I really would like to see. And on that route is Compiègne where history was written. Would like to see this place. With all that history the big question is why river cruise ships do not have a detour onto the Oise up to Compiègne and then sail back onto the Seine. Have they ever done? I see the first locks are big enough, the space for small* river cruise ships is there (5.25m headroom, 2.5m depth of channel) and as we have seen there has been commercial traffic for a long time. I could not find a particularly low bridge either. I wonder what I am missing. *like 105m by 9.5m with only two passenger cabin levels notamermaid

Okay, I am pulling my next report forward to tonight. It is looking better, the computer modelling suggests lower figures for the next three days than previously calculated and the 700cm is further away, i.e. out of probability. The most likely scenario is levels around 685cm on Monday, level now is 675cm. Sounds good. notamermaid

Moving on to Basel, this is how this played out at the bend where the river turns North: We see the peak caused by the weather pattern and Lake Constance as well as the Aare river draining a high volume of water. After a short recovery there was a short, smaller peak. Since then the river has recovered a bit but continues to react strongly to rain at a high level. Of course, the Canal in France as well as the free-flowing river was affected but we move on to Maxau gauge: The pattern is basically repeated. We see the river having crossed the HSW line, which is the river traffic ban. It continues to be high, well above the mean, which is set at 496cm. At Kaub in the Middle Rhine valley it gets interesting as to what the rivers joining the Rhine have contributed to the flooding. Those are mainly the Neckar and the Main. Both rivers were indeed high but we see nevertheless a slightly changed graph. There was not that much rain coming from the river basin from Mannheim downstream itself and the left tributaries did not supply a much higher volume than normal. The river traffic ban was short: By the time the river reaches Cologne the strain usually eases, especially when the Moselle has not been flooding - which is precisely what happened at the beginning of June - again, the weather pattern favoured the regions East of the Rhine. This is Cologne gauge, no river traffic ban: notamermaid

Thank you. Yes, that is exactly what I was hinting at. They use their purpose-built modern barge MS Raymond. A trip on the Seine and Oise: https://www.croisieurope.travel/en/destination/the-oise-valley notamermaid

We still have high levels on the Rhine so to show why I will start the look back at June with the graph for Lake Constance: At the beginning of the month the level was well above the mean, which due to snow melt is not unusual for Spring of course. But then we saw the weather front which stayed in the South of Germany basically, rotating and bringing heavy rain. The Lake soon reached flooding status. This huge body of water is slow to drain and at this time of year is still fed by some snow melt. So with additional rain and higher temperatures the Lake could not return to a more normal level for this time of year. The level remains very high and on official flooding status. This - together with a higher than normal volume of water from the rivers in Switzerland - gives us continued high levels in the Upper Rhine valley. notamermaid

Let us have brief look back at June. The Rhine and the Danube flooded, so what happened on the Main? This is Würzburg gauge: Yes, the river rose to a mild flooding level for just three days, not reaching the figure of 340cm (river traffic ban). So issues on the Main that river cruisers may have experienced along the way will have been almost entirely at the low bridges. We had the curious case of the weather front favouring the South of Germany with therefore not a huge amount of rain coming into Main basin from the river's Northern tributaries. notamermaid

In the Middle Rhine valley there are the traditional fireworks events but on the Danube there are some, too. One "Danube in Flames" event is taking place at Vilshofen on 12 and 13 July. The town should be rather busy on that weekend: https://www.vilshofen.de/freizeit-geniessen/was-ist-los-in-vilshofen/veranstaltungs-highlights/donau-in-flammen The webcams of Vilshofen: https://www.vilshofen.de/wir-in-vilshofen/seien-sie-willkommen/webcams notamermaid

I agree, sounds exactly the sort of thing Viking might do. The Seine ships are 125m long, for those not having looked into this: the standard is 135m, the Elbe has much smaller Viking ships due to the nature of the river, the Seine ships Viking decided to built that size after the authorities refused permission to dock in Paris at the dock that CroisiEurope for example uses as it was not deemed safe to turn the 135m ships in the area. CroisiEurope's ships are 110m long. But speaking of which - we should have a look at CroisiEurope in this topic. notamermaid

All can be reached as per what the river conditions are as such, but the river traffic ban is for this section here, that is Germersheim to Iffezheim (see figure below): That is correct, see figure below. I am not aware of any problems at bridges in the area, they have a lot of headroom but I cannot rule out any problems as I am not aware of details. Closer to Basel there is a low bridge but that will not be something to be deduced by the level at Maxau but by Hauenstein gauge and Basel itself. 750cm at Maxau gauge. Other gauges determine river traffic bans for other sections. At this point in time the risk of a river traffic ban at Maxau is negligible. It is statistically possible. 700cm has a high probability. Saturday we will know more. notamermaid