Self Drive Boats

Cruising in Alsace - Lorraine - Ardennes

Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Meuse - Village in the forest

Church and Town Hall at Turkheim

Cathedral St Etienne - Toul

Lutzelbourg

Highlights

Lutzelbourg
Canal de la Marne au Rhin, Canal de la Sarre, Moselle, Canal des Vosges.

The base at Lutzelbourg provides an Alsatian welcome, with its castle and its famous crystal workshops. Whichever way you cruise, half timbered houses gay with window boxes, onion-domed church-towers, intricate wrought-ironwork and a hundred small details give the villages a festival air. Wherever you stop, you’ll find the food equally special: choucroute and charcuterie as well as mouth-watering plum and greengage tarts. Cruising the Canal de la Sarre you pass mainly through woodland with the odd small town to tempt you with a restaurant meal. At Sarreguemines you’ll be charmed by the hand-decorated pottery. On your return you’ll travel on the boat lift at Arzwiller which replaces 17 locks. Following the Marne-Rhine Canal you pass through Saverne with its ducal palace and across the Alsatian plain to the heart of Strasbourg. At Toul, a town fortified by Vauban and enjoying fine views over the loops of the river Moselle, you are entering Lorraine. Its countryside is just as fine as its cities, of which Nancy and Metz are the highpoints

Pont-a-Bar/Dinant-Anseremme
Canal de la Meuse, Meuse, Canal des Ardennes, Canal de l'Aisne a la Marne.

With Ardennes Nautisme
The word Ardennes means in Celtic “dense forest”. Cruising these waterways from your base at Pont-a-Bar, and breathing in the pure country air, you will understand how the area acts as a lung to Europe. Home of wild boar, roe-deer and some of France’s rarest birds, the Ardennes forests also shelter in their protected wetlands such rarities as orchids and the fly-catching sundew. You will be charmed by the Meuse as it twists and loops its way to Charleville-Mezières. Beyond, deeper into the Ardennes, there are delightful towns to cruise to across the Belgian border. With its 650km of cruising waterway, the Champagne Ardenne region offers tremendous scope and variety.