Three Castles Above Éguisheim

A quick post in response to Ferrari's second consecutive overall win at Le Mans, with a few sights from the manufacturer's home town, Maranello. Everything here is Ferrari: their road car factory with the classic entrance gate (above), the more modern F1 team base, the Fiorano test track, the Scuderia museum, the statues to founder Enzo Ferrari and the Prancing Horse, a park featuring Ferrari's most famous road car models...

Yep, everything is Ferrari here. Except, well, this store front apparently. It's rather gutsy to show off a Lambo badge here, but then again, historically, middle fingers to Ferrari was what Ferrucio Lamborghini was all about!

Another edge of a fog bank on the bridge between the Port du Rhin and Citadelle sectors of Strasbourg. The railway is a freight line, I'm not sure if it's used much. The river, however, regularly sees barges passing by. Anyone or anything on the river had to be on the lookout that morning...

I can't remember riding a steam train before, though deep inside, I feel I probably had. Anyway, now I'm sure! This is the Chemin de Fer Touristique du Rhin, a short line near Colmar which runs steam engines and a set of old Austrian carriages, of which I'll say more in another post. Meanwhile, it's been a busy time for me recently, so this is just a few photos from the ride while I wind down.

"Take the aircraft engine out!" - the AP1-88 hovercraft

The Tim Traveller has just dropped a video about the massive SR.N4 car-carrying cross-channel hovercraft (which got a mention here) on display at Portsmouth, and he notes that there is still an active hovercraft service between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. That reminded me that I had a couple of pictures of that, and I thought I was primed for part 3 of "stick an aircraft engine in it". Two problems though.

First problem, the pictures aren't great. Taken in 2012 from the Mont Saint Michel ferry exiting Portsmouth harbour with my previous camera, which had a less powerful zoom and a lower resolution than my current one. It's still enough, in conjunction with the Wikipedia page on Hovertravel, the company that operates these vehicles, to narrow it down. The hovercraft can only be one of two vessels, the Freedom 90 or the Island Express (squinting at the bow it might be former), but the exact identity matters little. Both are of the same type: an AP1-88 built by the British Hovercraft Corporation, successor to Saunders-Roe who built the big cross-channel model.

And that's where the second problem arises: the AP1-88 is not powered by aircraft engines! It is powered by 4 Diesel engines, making it much quieter and more economical to run, while still capable of reaching 50 knots. It shows that passenger hovercraft transport is possible without gas turbines, and Hovertravel's current fleet consists of two Diesel hovercraft built in 2016 by Griffon.

Nonetheless, chalk up the hovercraft as something I have seen in action!

Views from Ôwakudani

As the volcano's activity isn't explosive, and there's a whole hot spring business around it, humans have been trying to tame Mount Hakone, as evidenced by the many consolidation structures seen at Ôwakudani.

These continue down the valley to contain landslides which could happen if things get more intense. Nonetheless, occasionally, a gas vent juts out, placing a distinctly natural form amongst the organised, man-made network of walls.

The yellow deposits are typically sulphur from a very pungent gas. Depending on the direction of the wind, the smell in some locations on the summit can be quite literally breathtaking.

The views, meanwhile, are figuratively breathtaking, from the striking contrasts in vegetation in the foreground to Lake Ashi and the outer mountain range of the Hakone caldera in the background.

And, of course, it is possible to see Mount Fuji from Ôwakudani. Terms and conditions apply, as always, but what little I could see on that morning gives a sense of scale to the great mountain. However, later that day, we would be treated to a much clearer view of Fuji-san.

Rheinfall: up close, personal and wet

Let's start by crunching the numbers: the Rhine falls in Switzerland are 23 m tall and 150 m wide (boat for scale). On average, in summer, 600 cubic metres of water pass through every second. That's 600 000 Litres - assuming you need 2 L of water per day and will live to 80 years old, that's easily 10 times more water than you will drink in your entire lifetime, past your eyes in one second. Every second. Of every day. They don't turn this off at night!

Obviously, this is quite the unstoppable force, and the people at Rheinfall have figured out several ways to allow visitors to witness this force up close. A trail down from Schloss Laufen to the river side includes several platforms right next to the rushing water. It's noisy, it's impressive, and definitely humbling to be almost in the path of a wall of water.

But several steps further are available: boat rides that go against the current, right into the stream of the waterfall, and, not to be outdone, a boat that goes to the jagged rock smack in the middle of the falls, and drops you off for 20 minutes. I didn't do those because I was wet enough just from the rain, but it was tempting. So was a zip line in the hills, but man, if there was a zip line crossing the Rhine in view of the falls - not over them directly because that would spoil it for everyone else, but around where one of the boat crossings is -, that would be incredible!

Speaking of that rock in the middle, I love it. It's a masterpiece of erosion, and still taking the full force of the Rhine... for now. In a few thousand years I guess we won't be sending so many people there.

Local Ampelmännchen!

While the East Berlin Ampelmännchen has become a cultural icon, other cities in Germany have been getting their own personalised red and green men for pedestrian traffic lights, from historical figures like Karl Marx in Trier, to mascots.

So on the left, we have Brezelbu, a mascot for Speyer's annual pretzel festival. These lights were implemented in time for the 2023 edition.

On the right, we have Det, one of six little characters introduced in the 1960s on TV channel ZDF to transition in and out of ad breaks. The characters were called the Mainzelmännchen, or the little men from Mainz, so the city has adopted them as mascots of sorts.

Pouancé

The small town of Pouancé is on a remarkable geographical "quadruple point", on the border of four départements! A peculiarity that dates back to the Middle Ages, when it was on the battlefront between France-affiliated Anjou and the still fiercely independent Duchy of Brittany. As such, Pouancé had a castle; its Breton counterpart was at Châteaubriant, and both towns were besieged at some point during the 15th century.

With a friend from Châteaubriant, we got to witness barriers being removed as what we guessed were maintenance or renovation works on the path around the castle were finished. The castle itself only opens during the summer, but at least we got to walk all around and get some good views of the castle, through the neighbouring park.

If you're driving into Pouancé from the West, this is how you know you've arrived:

Fort National, Saint Malo

Work is starting to pile up on my end, so I have to make this a quick one.

This is Fort National, a building we saw in the post on MV Bretagne. It was built in the late 17th century by Vauban - one of many, many, many projects he designed for Louis XIV's grand plan to fortify the French border. It was called Fort Royal, a name which would stick for little more than a century, before the Revolution banished any mention of royalty. It became Fort Républicain, then Fort Impérial under Napoleon, and finally Fort National after Napoleon III's Empire was defeated by Prussia in 1870. This regular name changing was derided by a local nickname, "Fort Caméléon", but it also give a glimpse into France's political history.

The rock on which the fort sits, known as Îlette (the small island), has quite a sorry history. Before Vauban, it was apparently used as an execution ground by local lords, and during World War II, the occupying Nazis used it as a prison during Allied bombings - fully expecting the fort to be bombed.

Today, the fort is privately owned, but visits are allowed on occasions.

MV Bretagne's final crossing

I haven't got my eye on the Channel as much as I used to, so I only found out last weekend that this ship had its final run on the night of 3-4 November.

Bretagne was Brittany Ferries' first purpose-built cruise ferry, launched in Saint Nazaire in February 1989 and entering service in July of that year. At over 150 m in length, appointed with over 350 cabins and a higher level of comfort than other ferries in service at the time, she was designed to be the company's flagship, sailing the longest routes to Spain and Ireland.

As tourism between the UK and continent became more popular, Brittany Ferries' fleet of cruise ferries expanded further in the early 90s, to the point where Bretagne was no longer the company's largest ship by 1993. While Val de Loire took over the Portsmouth-Santander route, Bretagne became a regular on Portsmouth-St Malo, serving her namesake region. So, in the summer of 1994, it was she who carried my family over to new lives in France.

While not my favourite ferry, Bretagne is a particularly important one on a personal level. So it was nice to catch her by chance departing St Malo in July 2019, around her 30th anniversary. Five years later, and she would pass behind the islands off the Corsair City for the final time, bound for Le Havre to await her sale.

Kenavo, Bretagne!