Tuesday 17th August 2004 Tiergarten to Neuruppin.

Mooring quay at Neuruppin. Ruppinersee

14.4° C Hazy clouds, sun burnt through mid-morning. Later in the afternoon black clouds came over but it remained dry. Mike was up first and untied, setting off at 7 a.m. to get to the first lock, Hohenbruch, for opening time 8.00 a.m. A young man worked the lock, we rose 0.7m in almost complete silence. Wonderful – we could hear the birds. The canal above was narrow and wild, running through mixed forest of birch, alder and fir. A kingfisher obligingly sat on a branch by a sign, which had been put up by the newly created pathway, which indicated that this was the habitat of kingfishers. Two small cruisers went past

Common European kingfisher -
Beautiful Wikimedia photo by Ryan Cheng

heading downstream as we went into the first small lake of the Kremmener Rhin, which is in a nature reserve. The lake was almost choked with yellow and white water lilies and masses of swallows were diving over the water after flies. We’d been having cleg attacks, but we doubted the swallows would eat anything that big. Among the water lilies were the small flowers of the common frog bit (not so common - we hadn’t seen any here before) with three-petaled tiny white flowers on slender stalks they resembled miniature water lilies. We passed a waterways launch pushing a pan of sand, out came the camera. The chap driving it must also have been the driver of the digger on floats, which was waiting for the sand to continue back filling behind a row of tree stumps to make a new bank edge at the end of a mooring restriction, which had lasted all the way

Tin man with a boat on his head.
(Actually Parzival,
from medieval German romantic poem)
Neuruppin

through the nature reserve, 4.5 kms. Just after the junction with the Alter Rhin we met another cruiser heading downstream. We’d been battling with clegs, so I’d tried a ruse by drawing eyes on a piece of paper, I cut them out and stuck them on the backs of our hats to confuse the blighters who like to get behind and bite – to my great surprise it made them circle! Bill had paused for a cuppa beyond the next bridge, I’d just been inside and made one too. We passed two more downhill cruisers at the entrance to Bützsee, another small lake. It was 11.30 a.m. and the lake was bubbling, pooh! methane! The sun had come out. Another cruiser went past, its crew waving madly. The kilometre posts had been attached to tree stumps in the lake bed. It was midday as we arrived below the staircase lock at Altfriesack. We expected to have to wait two hours while the keeper went on her lunch break, but she emptied the top lock and we got a green light. She came down alongside the big square bottom chamber to make sure we could get across the cill, which has 0.9m clearnace. No problem, we only draw 70cms. As we were rising 1.1m, Glyn ‘phoned to get an address for the mail. He’d had a letter from the bank, not their fault, they said, so they couldn’t accept my claim for compensation for the calls and they’d still got our old address. The lock filled and the keeper

Holy Trinity Church at Neuruppin

lifted the bridge beyond the top gates and we motored on to the Ruppinersee, a long narrow lake varying from half to a full kilometre in width. Lunch. A small police launch went past as we were eating our sandwiches. Several cruisers were moored along the edges of the lake and one lone sailboat braved the gusting wind, which had started to pick up. At 2 p.m. we moored by the old wall in Neurrupin, behind an old trip boat. The building beyond the quay had been demolished and was now a building site. It’s going to be a hotel, so the quay will disappear according to a man (called Wolfram who moors there) who came to talk to us. He remembered the three narrowboats from four years ago (Temujin, Pensax and Fleur-de-Segre). New steps had been built in front of the twin spired church and a tinfoil man with a boat on his head had been built by the small boat moorings. Rosy came alongside and Mike set the TV up. The wind picked up and rocked the boat most of the afternoon, but calmed down again in the evening.