Friday 17th - Sunday 19th June 2005 KP215 Lipki-via Gorzów Wielkopolskie-KP45 Warta.

Moorings at Santok, with newly added access planks and ladders

Friday 17th June 2005  KP215 Lipki-via Gorzów Wielkopolskie-KP45 Warta.

14.4º C milder. Overcast hazy clouds, weak spells of sunshine, windy. Bill managed to fall off the end of the plank and stick one leg into the mud halfway up to his knee. His ropes came off and he was away at just after eight. We lifted the stakes, hauled the ropes and plank in and were off downriver again fifteen minutes later. Clouds of small black houseflies were a real pest as we were untying and we swatted a few cleggs (a vicious type of blood-sucking horsefly) as we set off. We overtook Rosy as Mike was finishing off washing the mud

Ferry across the Warta at Notec

off the back deck. Some swans took off from the edge of the river. Mike saw a very rare sight and called me to look. It was a dead swan, floating in the river where the others had just taken off from. At 9.15 a.m. we passed through Santok and said goodbye to the river Notec and hello again to the river Warta. The posts set in the river at Santok now had wooden planks which hooked over the wooden horizontal bars with

Houses at Santok

short vertical ladders attached to the ends of each plank. I took another photo of the beaver damage to the trees at Czechów. Gorzów soon came into view, its distant tower blocks lined up along the crest of the hill looking like a modern day citadel. The cooling towers at Wawrów dominated the skyline above the little town. One had been painted blue with clouds in an attempt to disguise it. Round the last couple of bends and we were at Gorzów. Just after passing under the

Beaver damage to trees at Czechow

new road bridge, Mike turned the bows upstream and entered the channel into the basin where there were new yellow posts to moor to in a relatively quiet hidden corner of the town. The channel was 5m deep, more than twice the depth outside on the Warta. It was 10.45 a.m. As we passed underneath the new bridge again I heard someone shouting, then discovered two teen-aged

High rise blocks of flats at  Gorzow

girls sitting on the girderwork right underneath the town side edge of the bridge. Bill brought Rosy alongside and then he went off on his bike to find an Internet café, as Waterways World and Canal and Riverboat had suddenly taken an interest in his idea to do an article on the first narrowboats to ride the Elblag lifts. I asked him if he was going to the market and saw any lettuces to get us an iceberg (they’d got none,

Cooling towers at  Gorzow

but he found lots of ladies underwear in some huge sizes - the market stalls were nearly all clothes). On his return, he said when he went past the girls under the bridge they wanted him to give them money – I dread to ask what for. Whilst at the Internet café, he’d managed to order a battery for our camera which would cost £14 plus VAT and be delivered free to Glyn’s in the UK. Mike went

Advertising on the sides of the high rise flats Gorzow

across to the Statoil garage by the bridge and bought some petrol at 4.05 Zł a litre (68p), then emptied his cans to go and get some diesel. He came back with two cans containing 54.8 litres at 3,65 Zł (61p) per litre. We set off again at 1.30 p.m. I made some more coleslaw for lunch. The weather was starting to turn grim, it started to drizzle as we set off, but fortunately stopped again soon after. The Polish yacht we’d been

Gorzow town quay and markets

seeing in various places was on the town quay by the markets (brave chap, we wouldn’t leave our boats unattended in a town). We ate lunch travelling at a sedate pace downriver to the place near Dzierzów where we’d stopped at on 21^st April, where there were several big overhanging trees which the beavers had been chewing. It was 3.15 p.m. when we got there. I threw a rope around a dead tree and Mike

Paused at Gorzow in new offline basin

brought the stern alongside the bank, slung a plank off and we put ropes around the trees. Bill brought Rosy alongside and we put poles out at each end to keep us off the sandy bottom. Decided to stay here for the weekend as Mike wanted to watch the motor racing on Sunday. We turned in late at 12.45 a.m. only to get up again at 1 a.m. after hearing strange screeching noises, something scraping

Gorzow town quay and markets - yacht moored by market

down the hull. At first we thought it was an animal. A bit un-nerved by the fact that Mike had seen torchlight when he turned the inverter off just before we went to bed. I got the big spotlight in case it was poachers or animals - that would frighten ‘em! We opened the side doors half expecting to see a large head, with fur and teeth, but there was nothing there. The wind had picked up and the terrestrial TV aerial was blowing along the roof - its aluminium elements were making the noise! Mike

Leaving Gorzow, heading downstream on the Warta

fastened it down and took the mast down as it was trying to rip all the flags off.

Saturday 18th June 2005  KP45 nr Dzierzów Warta.

Day off. 13.3º C overnight. Sunny and warmer, but still very windy. The torchlight Mike saw the previous night must have been fishermen on the far bank, just round the bend downstream of us. We had a lazy morning. Mike went out with the camera to take photos of our mooring place and the trees that were almost chewed

Pushtow heading upriver.

through by beavers. Lunch. Got on with sorting our new digital photos. Stopped to cook tandoori chicken nuggets and chips for dinner. Watched the news and weather before starting again on the photos.

Sunday 19th June 2005  KP45 nr Dzierzów Warta.

10.6º C overnight. Sunny spells, cloudy at times but still windy. Another day off. Had a lazy morning. After

Tug Bobr (named after tributary of R Oder) pushing two loaded pans

Russian orthodox church dome in Gorzow

lunch we ran the engine and did some washing. Mike put our other satellite dish out on top of the bank to get analogue French TV to watch the Formula One Grand Prix from Indianapolis. There was a big row in America about F1. Ralph Schumacher’s car had crashed in practise when a tyre exploded. Most of the cars were also on Michelins, only three teams were on Bridgestone tyres. The race started with only six cars running – the ones on Bridgestones – the other drivers refused to race. Mike retrieved the dish and coax from on top of the river bank before bedtime.