Thursday 14th July 2005 Above Anderten locks to Haste.

15.6º C overnight. Hazy clouds first thing, but the sun soon burned them away. Clouds

46 foot ladder in Hindenburg lock at Anderten. MLK

developed in the afternoon and the breeze got stronger. Hot again. Ready for off at 8 a.m. but we’d missed a downhill locking by about ten minutes. Mike called the keeper on the intercom, which was alongside our stern, to ask if we could use the lock and also asked if it was OK to leave our car there for five or six hours. The keeper replied in English to say yes OK. I asked Bill if he was better after yesterday’s bad spell. He said the answer was salt. Lack of it, which was easily remedied, although he still didn’t feel 100%. The cruiser behind us, called Jersey, was going down the lock too. Bill had donated the baseball cap cycling helmet (he said it made him look a pillock) to one of the guys off the crusier. Two commercials came up and we followed the next two down to the lock, leaving our boats tied together. In front was the 100m Tiffany and behind him was Greif, an 80m boat, both were loaded German barges. The cruiser went for the biggest gap on the right hand wall leaving us what space there was behind the

Camera and loudspeakers on gantry
above Hindenburg lock

commercial. Mike moved us over to the left hand wall and I hastily went over on to Rosy’s front deck and used Bill’s bow rope to lasso one of the small iron recessed bollards in the chamber wall and held it over on Rosy’s side cleat. Bill put his stern rope around a similar bollard. We descended 14m in stages, moving ropes down to lower bollards, dropping sharply as the economiser paddles opened, slowing down as the water levels equalised before the next set of paddles opened.  It was 9.40 a.m. by the time we left the lock chamber, heading into Hannover. Two converted little tugs went past, flying German flags,  that’s three we’ve seen in west Germany. The canal threaded its way through the suburbs of Hannover, where there were some new modern bridges and a lot of redevelopment around the canal, but much of it had been defaced by graffiti and lots of it was vulgar. Some very ornate stonework looked in a sorry and dilapidated state as it had strips of stuff hanging off it, which could have been thin plastic sheeting or maybe varnish. A loaded boat called Nellie, a Dutchman from Heel, went past us heading

Getting ready to leave the lock

uphill, followed a little later by another big Dettmeer tanker, a pusher pair over 165m long. We paused for water at Hannover yacht haven. We couldn’t fit inside the moorings, which were in a small basin, so we lay against the short piles on the outside with our bows next to a wooden landing stage where there was a diesel pump and two water taps. Rosy came alongside. A man on a cruiser helped us with the hose and I got our own hose out to connect up to the other tap. There was no one around, I was told by the skipper of the cruiser, when

The last two out of the lock.

I asked where I could find the harbour master. He said he was waiting for diesel and told me we didn’t need to pay as there was no one there. So we didn’t! Set off again at 11.50 a.m. There was no sign of the sport boat mooring for the town, which used to be next to the police boat moorings, looked like it no longer existed. We passed the police boat WSP11 by the VW (van factory) nutzfahrzeugefabrik, the crew leaning out of the cabin to smile and wave. By the VW works there was a very interesting track laying vehicle making a new railway track, which had sets of road wheels which it had lifted itself off to do the digging and track laying. Mike took

Rail track laying vehicle

photos of the railway wagons at VW (for Glyn’s collection) and cranes at Continental tyres. A cruiser went past called Uranus, Bill joked on radio that it had a boat hanging on the back called tender Uranus – it had actually got “Ten Ura der nus” written across its stern. We passed the second British boat this year, a cruiser called Darius from London, heading uphill. (The first was just outside Berlin, spotted by Mike and Bill – I didn’t see it) Crossed the new aqueduct across the river Leine at KP 152. The old aqueduct was still

Coal-fired power station at Stocken KP157

there, the new one had been built alongside, but now there were signs to forbid access to the old one. At 2 p.m we passed the junction with the branch leading to Linden, a suburb of Hannover. There were lots of cruisers on the move, but there was a lull in the commercial traffic until we met a Dutch 50m empty, called Spes, from Dordrecht, just beyond the A2 autobahn bridge at KP 146, about an hour later. We were on a slight embankment, with the land on our left much lower than the canal, where fields were being harvested and we could see distant hills between

Continental tyre factory at Hannover KP157

the trees along the canal and a long line of eleven wind generators wound off towards the hills. Just after the next bend we were overtaken by a lady steering St Antonius, a loaded Dutch barge from Nijmegen. She wound it up to pass us, making a big hole in the water by her bows. There was another boat coming, but it was still nearly a kilometre away once she’d passed us. It was another Dutchman, Irbis, an 84m long 1000 tonner from Lemmer, coming towards us. Yet another Dutch boat, Mia Amore, was at the loading quay at KP 143 next to a huge pile of

Unusual crane Hannover docks

broken glass (cullet). I went on the front deck to take photos of the wall to wall water when two Dutch tugs (Mike said he thought they were private boats) were overtaking the next boat coming towards us. After they’d gone a police car drove down the towpath, heading in the same direction as us. At bridge 209, Kölenfeld, two youths jumped off the road bridge as we went underneath. They timed it well, one on either side, drenching the pair of us. Swines! They hopped out and ran round the bridge to do it again when Rosy went under the bridge. I didn’t get the camera turned on fast enough to get them dropping in. Bill didn’t get wet. Three more commercials were coming toward us as we reached the railway bridge before the mooring we

Dutch boat St Antonius overtaking

were aiming for at Haste, KP 138. A WSA craneboat was moored on the right hand side just before the bridge. It was tied to trees with “men at work” notices (with red lights on top) where the cables crossed the towpath. An empty called Havelland went past us. Then another big empty Dutch boat was overtaking a little loaded Bromberger as they came towards us through the two bridges. More photos. It was 4.15 p.m. as we tied to the sport boat mooring area. Helped Mike get the fizzer off the roof and he went off into Haste to see if the post from Glyn had

Swimmers either side of Rosy, just jumped off road bridge

arrived yet on his way back to Anderten to collect the car. Traffic on the canal was getting busy again and some of them were flying past as if they were going to miss last locking at Anderten (that’s not until ten o’clock tonight). Noisy kids were swimming in the cut between passing boats and two damp bikini clad nymphettes kept wandering up and down past our boats. Bill got accosted by a drunk on a bike who insisted on telling him about some booze smuggling. At midnight tonight, he said, a Polish boat will arrive with a load of vodka. There is a house

Dutch tugs overtaking oncoming traffic

at the other end of the quay (about a mile away) where the woman sells vodka at 5€ a bottle. He wobbled from side to side on the wide path along the moorings and Bill said he wondered if he would make it to the far end. What’s worse I said – will he make it back and will he care? I cooked pork steaks and veg for dinner and left it simmering until Mike returned at 7 p.m. He’d got the post from Glyn. We ate dinner at 8 p.m. There was no TV as we couldn’t get the satellite through the trees as we were moored at the wrong end of the mooring. Mike said that when he was going to fetch the car on the moped he saw a woman next to a camper van in a layby lifting her short skirt, doing a little dance while flashing her bright red knickers at the passing motorists! Whatever

next?