Tuesday 3rd May 2005 Junc Noteç canal to above Brda lock. 21.3kms 4 locks

Below lock 6 Osowa Góra.

12.1º C overnight. Warm sunny day. Up at seven, away at eight and in the top lock, No 6, Osowa Góra, twenty minutes later. No one around. Mike went to see if there was anyone at the house by the lock. Nope, nor the house a little way down the sandy lane. Bill tried ‘phoning the number for the lock that was in our German book. The man who answered didn’t understand. Mike suggested there might be someone at the next lock which was a kilometre away. Bill rode down on his bike. The people there got the next lock ready - he wasn’t sure if they understood that

Below lock 5 Prądy

there was no one to work the top lock. A bloke appeared from the house in the lane, he would ‘phone to get us a lock keeper. A woman arrived, not looking very pleased, at 9.45 a.m. after we’d been waiting for an hour and a half. She closed the top gate behind us and did the paperwork, charging Bill for two locks. We dropped down 3.4m in the top lock chamber of No 6, Osowa Góra, with a crowd of gongoozlers watching who’d gathered on the bridge over the tail of the lock. A man went past driving a loaded cart pulled by two white horses. The sharp right turn on a steep slope l

Old lock above lock 4 Czyżkówo

eaving the left side of the bridge looked very tricky, they did it at high speed making it look like something from the chariot race in Ben Hur! We trundled on down the short pound to the next lock and I made tea and toast whilst vacuuming the carpet. At lock 5, Prądy, another sullen faced woman worked the lock for us. She didn’t even want to see the previous lock receipts. Lock 4, Czyżkówo, was the first deep, modernised lock, worked by a keeper pressing buttons in a high cabin on the lockside. A young man came out to have all the details and relieve us of

Below lock 4 Czyżkówo

22,72 Złotys for the two boats for two locks. We hadn’t got the right change, we were 5 grosny short - he said forget the grosny - 22 Złotys was OK. An old chap accompanied him who was keen to know where we’d come from and where we were going. We’d moored as usual on the right hand side of the chamber where two paddles, counterbalanced with huge weights in an open tube, let water out into two economiser side pounds before the gate paddles in the bottom end mitre gates let out the remaining water into the short pound below. We descended 7.8m, fast, with recessed bollards set into the lock wall to hang the centre rope on. Just one

Below lock 3 Okole

kilometre to the next lock, No 3 Okole, where an elderly couple were out on the lockside to welcome us and call us over on to the left hand side. All the ropes, etc, were set up to use the right hand wall, but never mind - we have to be adaptable! Mike asked the old lady if there was drinking water available, she misunderstood him and said we had to move the boat down two more bollards towards the tail end of the lock chamber - Mike thought this was to get to a tap in the control cabin - no it was something to do with the suction from the paddles, which were on the left wall this time. I'd just about managed to get Bill’s rope attached to our bows

Electricity works on the river Brda

when the old chap had pulled the plug and we were descending. Mike had got the centre rope which he left to me and went to help Bill sort out his stern rope. Then he was moaning at me about not controlling the ropes properly and the wind was blowing the boats off the lock wall, so he had to restart our engine and bring us back on to the wall so I could change the rope over on to the next bollard down! What a fiasco! The old couple had retreated into the lock cabin. Below the deep lock - we’d gone down a further 7.4m - we were on the river Brda, following Rosy into Bydgoszcz. The flowing water was clear - we could see sandbanks below the surface! Two bridges

Rail bridges - very battered wooden baulks

very close together caused some consternation when Bill went through the middle arch of the old (and surrounded by very battered wooden baulks) three-arched, high, brick railway bridge. Too late to change our minds we spotted the navigation sign way up above us attached to the railings on the more modern road bridge, indicating we should have been over on the left. Fortunately there were two navigation arches – we’d gone through the one for uphill traffic, luckily there was none around! (There had been no sign of any “change over to the left bank” sign either!) Below the railway bridge we could see more sandbanks on a big left

Double railway bridge

hand bend as we went past a park full of people enjoying what must be a holiday. There was a fun run going on, lots of people in shorts with numbers on their vests were racing towards us along the path on the left hand bank. People in the park waved cheerily and there were lots of young people in rowing skiffs heading upriver being guided and coached by the usual guys in small speedboats with a megaphone. A red, white and blue painted tug coming towards us, stopped by a landing near the park just before the next bridge. It was a trip boat or water taxi, unloading passengers and picking up more. We carried on downriver into lock 2,

Bydgoszcz, where a pleasant young man came to take details and requested more cash. Mike asked if he had drinking water and we were glad to find he said yes, swop over to the left side of the lock again. We were down to half a tank. Our yellow hose and one of Bill’s short green ones did the trick and the tank was soon full. Meanwhile Mike went in the cabin to pay up –the guy got his sums wrong and tried to charge us for two locks, his and the one we’d just come down – we’d already paid for that one! We hadn’t got enough change still – Mike paid him 10 Złotys plus all the change we’d got - another 45 grosny - instead of the 11,36 Złotys that it should have cost us. I spotted some graffitti on the wall of

The water taxi in Bydgoszcz

the building behind the lock cabin, which was all smartly painted yellow, where someone had scrawled the word “Druid” - I took a photo (for our old friend JD) of Mike on the top steps of the lock cabin stairs with JD’s boat’s name written on the wall behind him! The trip boat arrived and came into the lock behind us just as I handed the hose over to Bill to refill Rosy’s water tank. A mere ten minutes later we were descending another 3.5m. The phone rang as the keeper started letting the water out - Mike had to hang on to the lock ladder with a boat shaft in one hand and ‘phone in the other, as the wind threatened to force the boats off the wall again. As soon as the lock was empty and Bill had moved out, the trip

Church and old granaries in Bydgoszcz

boat roared off to drop passengers at a landing in the city centre and overtook us again ten minutes later as we were passing a restaurant boat, called Melody, a converted 80m former commercial boat. There was a kid’s party going on on the right bank with loud pop music and a bouncy castle. More rowers were coming upriver, dodging the trip boat as it overtook us. I made lunch which we ate on the stern. We gauged that the Brda was gently flowing at around 1.5 kph. Out of the city centre and into a series of lakes. There were fishermen everywhere and posts either side of the channel

Modern building on banks of Brda

through the lakes. Judging by the ducks standing on the bottom several metres from the edges the lake was pretty shallow by the banks. Among the trees surrounding the lakes old factories were visible, with ancient brick chimneys extended upwards with concrete tubes, a hotch-potch of buildings and houses. We passed an old wharf with cranes and a few old boats still moored there and evidence of the days of log rafting remained where loads of logs had been strung together with thinner poles atop them and grouped together. Several dozens of these were located along the edges of a couple of small lakes next to a big woodyard where

Church on banks of Brda river

huge piles of timber were being kept damp by rotating sprinklers. There were lots of ancient dolphins for long-gone boats to tie to, now occupied by birds - cormorants, terns and gulls. A chorus of three gulls, sitting facing each other on top of three posts close very together, made us smile - they almost seemed to be singing in close harmony as the squawking changed note and key! Under a railway bridge we turned sharp left to face an enormous regatta site. The whole of the lake seemed to be occupied by strings of small yellow marker buoys for rowing lanes. At first we couldn’t make out which way to get around it, we couldn’t see any signs or

Statue of high wire artiste over the river Brda in Bydgoszcz

channel markers. Then, through binoculars, we spotted a small green cone on top of one of the starting gates for the racing course, way over on the far right hand bank. We didn’t think there was enough space between that and the bank until we got closer and could see there was a sizeable channel which lead to the lock. On the left bank an old commercial boat, about 100m long, was moored bows to the bank and beyond it was a small sailing club where a handful of little dinghies were enjoying the light breeze. By the lock there were dolphins linked by gangways with bank access which was occupied by a lone commercial, an 80m empty called

More statues in Bydgoszcz

Transbode-6 from Wrocław. Beyond it there was also mooring space on the left where another length of linked dolphins with a gangway on top of them, fronted with horizontal piling, lead to the lockside. We moored there and Rosy came alongside. Mike and Bill went to investigate. Bill carried Fanny as the gangways were made of open metal grids, which the dog hated walking on as it hurt her feet.  There was no one at the lock except a security guard, who told them that the lock opened at seven in a morning. Mike took the echo sounder out of its tube as he thought it was losing sensitivity and suspected the end of the transducer would be covered with molluscs. Bill sorted out a length of 22mm dia copper tube for him and soldered a fitting on to it to extend it with a piece of 28mm pipe with a copper to compression converter and a polypropylene nut glued in with araldite to make an extractor to pull the echo sounder transducer out of its tube, as it had become stuck and couldn’t be pulled out with the co-ax.

Log rafts on river Brda close to junction with  river Wisla (Vistula)

Bill (remember he is a diver) had baulked at the idea of freeing it by pushing from underneath! Although he did offer to lend Mike his diving mask - who quickly retorted - thanks, Bill, but it won’t fit me! Meanwhile a very drunken man staggered down the path towards the commercial moored behind us. He had two plastic bags with vodka bottles in each of them and the bottom fell out of one as he was passing our boats. He stopped to retrieve the bottle, which had fallen in the grass, and keeled over. He sat there for a while wondering which way was up and how to get there! Mike hid in the cabin - coward! A little later the skipper from the boat came to chat. Mike and Bill asked where they could obtain cheap diesel and he said look no further - he could sell them some of his. We moved the boats to moor alongside the battered old barge and he filled our containers from his tank. Mike was surprised to find it was white diesel, not red. He charged us 2,50 Złotys a litre (€0,62.5) and we each had 80 litres before he said no more. He’d just been showing Mike an advert in the paper for the local naughty ladies – he pointed to one advert and made a ‘phone call, got changed and then set off into town on the back of his friend’s motorcycle - we guessed where the profits from his diesel selling were going to be spent. We moved the boats back to the mooring and Mike continued trying to sort out the echo sounder which he had cleaned (it had been covered with mussels) but wouldn’t register any depth. He hung it overboard while I watched the display in the engine room and it showed a depth of 4m, but the display kept going off and wouldn’t register anything when he put the transducer back in its tube. Eventually he gave up and said it must be the grotty state of the bottom of the river under the boat causing the lack of return signal. Transducers either work or they don’t. I made a chicken five spice stir fry for dinner. Later we watched the European weather forecast on Sky News and saw a huge belt of heavy rain forecast for northern Poland and Germany for the next day. Mike told Bill he thought it would be a good idea if we stayed put until the bad weather cleared up. We couldn’t get any information from the barge skipper about moorings down the river Wisla towards Gdansk and we knew it would take us at least eleven hours to get to the Nogat where we knew there was a mooring below the lock. The mighty Vistula is a very difficult navigation at the best of times, so it would be advisable not to go if it’s pouring with rain as good visibility for chasing the channel markers is vital on a river full of shifting sandbanks.