As mentioned in our previous post, we had arrived in Toul on 14 September expecting to spend a few days there. Events conspired to keep us there for a few days more than we anticipated, but we regretted none of them.

Early on, the city was part of the Holy Roman Empire but by the 16th century it had been annexed by France, a fact recognised by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Toul’s most striking features at first sight are its stone ramparts, yet another example of the work of Louis XIV’s ubiquitous military engineer, Vauban, in the late 17th century.

The Port de France, where we moored is located between the railway station and the old city, which is a typical walled town hemmed in by its ramparts and with lovely old streets radiating from its generous central circus. A small city of some 16,000, it enjoys what you would expect in the way of shopping, with smart boulangeries/patissseries, boucheries and fromageries, boutiques and specialty shops. Every Wednesday and Friday there is an excellent outdoor marché in the centre ville, with a range of food stalls as well as clothes and bric à brac.

 

Toul was blessed with several excellent boulangeries but foremost among them is Battavoine avec deux thes, opposite the port which, along with its satellite Maison Battavoin alongside the port, kept us in constant supply of baguettes, breads, custard flans, tourtes de Lorraine and other delicious goodies.

We also found an excellent bike dealer in the town centre who was able to fix Jane’s bicycle, which had suffered a flat tyre and for which we had back in Belgium bought an entirely unsuitable spare inner tube. The nice man there also adjusted the brakes, seat and handlebar settings for us, making it almost like a new bike.

To be honest, the restaurants and brasseries of Toul  are nothing to shout about, with one or two exceptions which we will get to later. But it is possible to find a nice place in the town centre to grab a coffee and a snack and spend some lazy time watching the world pass by.

Two businesses right across the road from the port proved to be fantastic finds for us. The first was the Dépôt Vente de Toulois, a second-hand store selling an extraordinary range of pre-loved stuff. Everything from bistro chairs to banjos, from bathroom vanities to violins. Every visit was a delight and a torture in finding new things we wanted but couldn’t have.

When we bought Eben Haezer we inherited, along with all sorts of useful stuff, a truly massive, heavy, unwieldy “captain’s chair”, which took up most of the wheelhouse, was never particularly comfortable or useful, and had outlived its welcome as far as we were concerned. At the Dépôt we discovered a sweet little bistro stool which seemed to us perfectly suited to the role. We bought it for not very much, and negotiated with the lovely man at the Dépôt to sell him the captain’s chair for a song, a fraction of its true value, but with the added bonus that he would pick up the 40-kilo monster himself from the dock. A great bargain, in our minds. And probably his, as far as we knew.

The other delight was our discovery of Domaine de l’Ambroisie, a wine producer/cellar hidden down a laneway opposite the port. This was our first experience of a genuine domaine, as opposed to a “cave” or wine dealer, since we had arrived in France, and we loved it.

It was great to speak to the young winemakers, and to hear them boast about the quality of their wines, the terroir which they considered the equal of Champagne, the methode they used to make their vintages. Their prices were great so we bought a few boxes of white, sparkling and rosé, à Lorraine. In the event, they proved to be perfectly respectable and good value, but not outstanding. But it was a great buying experience and interaction with the producers.

So far, so wonderful. But there is another attractive aspect of Toul.  A short 2kms up the canal there is a second port, operated by Lorraine Marine, under the management of Duncan Flack, a bit of a legend, and a native English-speaker to boot. Duncan’s port offers a very acceptable winter mooring, but it also offers a wide range of services for boaters needing attention to their seemingly endless series of problems.

Our particular problem had manifested back in Anseremme on the Meuse, when we became aware that the house batteries were not recharging as they should, and the engine batteries were also a bit low in the morning when we wanted to get cruising. It got worse one day when we were actually unable to get enough current to start the engine and had to run the generator for a while to pump some charge back in to them.

We arranged with Duncan to come and have a look. He ascertained pretty quickly that (1) our house batteries were old and basically stuffed, and (2) our battery isolator was not working.

The point of the isolator is that it allows current to flow in only one direction, i.e. from the house batteries to the engine batteries and not the other way. In our case, the house batteries were losing charge (or not recharging), and were raiding the engine battery for current. The solution was to buy new batteries (ouch!) and physically disconnect the isolator. We also decided to buy a new Victron dual battery charger which, when we had access to shore power, would fully charge the house batteries as well as trickle charging the engine starter batteries.

At the end of a few days, Duncan had fitted four lovely but expensive new house batteries, giving us a boosted capacity of 420 amp hours (at 24 volts), connected the engine alternator to the engine batteries alone, bypassing the house batteries (a temporary but foolproof fix) and connected a new intelligent battery monitor to our wheelhouse control panel. We were significantly poorer, but immeasurably happier.

As if the efficient and effective attentions of Duncan F were not enough, Toul had two further delights for us. The first was its proximity to Nancy, less than half an hour away by frequent train service – but more of that in a separate post. The second was the opportunity to celebrate my 60th birthday in a truly memorable restaurant.

In fact, we were to leave Toul on September 21, the day of my birthday anniversary. Not knowing what lay ahead, we decided to take advantage of our location the night before and booked dinner in the best restaurant in town – La Table à Victor, right across from the port. Victor apparently refers to Victor Hugo (may have had something to do with its address, on Avenue Victor Hugo!)… one can only hope that the author might regularly have eaten as well as we did at the place named for him.

The restaurant’s decor was truly amazing and set the scene for a magnificent dinner. Jane had scallops followed by chicken, I think. I definitely know I had a beef dish cooked for 15 hours, followed by a miraculous souffle “mirabelle”, an impossibly light concoction flavoured delicately with Lorraine’s famous yellow plums, the mirabelles. It was the best meal by far we had enjoyed together in France (and Europe for that matter), it was staggeringly good value, and it was a fabulous way to celebrate entering my seventh decade on this little blue planet.