Wednesday 18th May 2005 jnc Kanal Jagielloński to below lift 3, Oleśnica.

Click here for a Google map of today's route

2º C overnight. A beautiful sunny day – how did the TV weather forecast get it so wrong, were they a day out? We left at 8.00 a.m. The breeze was chilly and there was a slight flow on the canal, the same way as we were going - towards Elblag. More black terns were catching flies. The reedy banks were full of loud warblers. The dykes were some 20m back from the canal and covered with stunted goat willow. We could see tall blocks of flats and factory chimneys in the distance. We passed a fishing party, four young men with two cars, a rowing boat and a

speedboat, plus a tent. They looked too gob-smacked to acknowledge our greetings. In front of them, were two wooden posts in the canal bed with red rags fluttering from them. We slowed down and crawled past in case they marked nets we couldn’t see. In Elblag the banks were lined with factories – then we spotted a boat harbour and did a quick right turn to go and search for water. An old chap was working on a yacht. He spoke no

English but we managed to ask for water which he went off to organise while we tied up – well the front half anyway – to a long wooden landing stage, part of which was occupied by small yachts. A purple hosepipe supplied the necessary and we both filled up. A large older bloke arrived and came to chat. He also spoke no English, but he brought his digital camera with him and picked on me to photograph. A younger guy with a long haired German shepherd dog at his heels came to speak about mooring. We said we only wanted water as we were pushing on to

Ostroda. They didn’t want any money for the water, which was very nice of them. As we turned back on to the main canal we spotted another boat yard on the far side – no signs of boating life at all for ages and now we were spoiled for choice! On the left bank we passed a very large factory with Alstom in large letters on its roof. Two very large propellors stood on the grass between the factory and the canal bank as decoration. On the right bank there was a police station

with two police boats moored in an arm (which looked like former GDR boats). Four very large trip boats were moored by a footbridge across the canal.  Later we realised that these boats did not continue any further in the same direction we were going but probably went down the other canal (Szkarpawa) and out into the big lagoon. Beyond the bridge there was a nice quay for mooring by a tall church tower.  Just before a railway bridge there was a junction, we took the left turn and went under the bridge – looking closely at the map later

the right turn was called Fiszewka. A bit further on we were faced with another junction and turned left again – on our right was another un-navigable canal called Kanal Tjna. There were lots of fishermen on the banks as we left Elblag behind. The first lake we came to was just a wide area off to our right covered with weed and occupied by swans, geese and seagulls. The first big lake was called Druzno and was wide, edged with lily pads and reeds. As I started

making lunch Mike called me to look at a big bird of prey. It was all dark brown with just a

whitish top of its head and neck. The only thing like it in my field guide book was an Imperial eagle. It was flying low over the reeds, dived down to catch something, then it took off to land out of sight in a tree. The canal leaving the lake was bordered on the left bank by a low dyke backed with wide empty meadows and the right bank was lined with goat willow trees, which were teeming with fluffy seeds. I photographed the first trip boat coming towards us. A modest size, 25m long by about 3.3m wide, the passengers all waved as we passed by them quite closely as the navigation was narrow. At 1.30 p.m. we arrived at the first boat lift,

number five Całuny Nowe (in German Neu Kußfeld), a 13m lift spread over a slope of 450m. We went up first while Bill waited in the narrows by the winding gear. It was quite an experience. All that was visible of the right hand trolley was two sets of wooden walkways with handrails. There was a shed bythe space where the other, descending trolley came to rest on the left side of the cut, but there was no one around. There was another hut on the crest of the slope, so Mike went a walk to find someone. The guy he found said OK he would be ready in a couple of minutes. We took the boat into the trolley and strung two ropes out from either side of the bows and the same from the stern to keep the boat in the centre of the flat bed when the water disappeared. We’d seen pictures of the trolley out of the water with trip boats in it, so we knew it was flat. There was a gong (Really!) on the left hand walkway to beat when we were ready to go. As the cables pulled the trolley up the bank the boat settled on to the timbers which ran horizontally across the bed of the trolley, sloping metal girders supported the wooden walkways and their handrails on either side of the boat. It was faster that we’d

imagined and in no time we were at the top of the 450m slope and running down the much shorter slope into the pound between lifts five and four. I moored the boat by the winding gear house, while Mike went off back down the slope on foot to give Bill a hand to come up with Rosy. He’d left me with all the Polish change we’d got and instructions to pay for the two boats. I put fenders down and tied rather precariously to a short section of wooden fendering with the bows pointing to the middle of the cut. Lots of books had fallen off the top of the bookcase, so I stacked them a bit more neatly on the floor and removed those that were left, placing those that could fall off down on the floor. Absent-mindedly, I collected the change off the roof and dropped it into my jeans pocket, completely forgetting they were a very old pair with a hole in the right hand pocket (normally I never put things in my jeans pockets) – the change went plink, plink, plink on the gunwale and bounced into the canal. Wonderful. Too deep to reach the bottom and, I found when I checked the depth with a short shaft,

the bottom was covered with rocks anyway so I had no chance of recovering the 15 Złotys I’d just lost. As Rosy came up to the top of the slope I went to pay the man with 30 Złotys in notes, securely in my other pocket. The winchman was sitting on a bench on canal level, so I asked if I had to pay him, he said “tak” (yes) and indicated I should follow him and went off down a long flight of wooden stairs down the bank to the winch house. No

English again and I had a job to understand – all five lifts were to be paid for at the same price as the locks, 5,68 each, making a total of 28,40 Złotys (£4.50) for each boat. He had no change – his cashbox was empty. Bill arrived – he wanted his own ticket as a keepsake – and he’d only got a 50 Złoty note. The man gave Bill my twenty, so we ended up paying 30 Złotys each. (A cunning way of getting a tip and they all do it, or try to!) As we set off to the next lift, I had Bill’s

camera plus our 35mm and got off to walk the slope on the next one, lift number four Jelenie (Hirshfeld in German) a 22.5m lift on a slope of 510m, taking photos of the two boats. There was no path on the side we were on, so Mike and I trudged up the corn field, Mike went off through the undergrowth to get to Rosy and I walked on until I got to the rail tracks. Mike went up on Rosy to help Bill, then the two of them walked back down the slope and brought Temujin up. Back on board the boat, we went on along the canal to lift number three, Oleśnica. There were woods on our left and fields of yellow colza on our right. We moored in the gap at the side of the big cable drums, while Bill got Rosy settled on the trolley. Mike went to help as before. They donged the gong and waited. No one appeared, it was 5.30 p.m. work must have stopped for the day. Bill reversed Rosy to the winding gear and we dropped ropes on the bollards by the cable drums and a bit of metal sticking up out of the bank. Bill moored Rosy in the gap with his bows on the winding gear island and his stern in the narrows. It was 5.45 p.m. by the

time we’d tied up. I cooked a stir-fry for dinner. Mike lit the coal fire as it started getting chilly and when we went to bed at midnight it was still alight.