Tuesday 12th July 2005 Edesbüttel to jnc. Saltzgitter branch.

Gold-ringed dragonfly

13.9º C overnight. Hot and sunny again, clouds appearing after lunch. Mike and Bill went in the car to a new Netto just down the road, to get bread etc. I did the chores early, while they were shopping, before we set off at 9.05 a.m. heading into a shallow cutting, towpaths on each bank –or should it be cyclepaths? For miles there were groups of kids on bikes (with minders), cycling along on both sides of the canal. Boat traffic was brisk. Another 80m, 1000 tonne load of wood for recycling went by. I wouldn’t like to have to be behind that for miles, what a pong –

Train crossing the "upside down" railway bridge

mouldy wood! It was being followed by a Danish yacht and, a few minutes behind that, a Swedish one. We paused at 10.15 a.m. and went into the little harbour at Abbesbüttel, where we had filled up with water on the way east the previous year. The moorings had changed totally, instead of being parallel to the main canal they were at ninety degrees, all the trees had gone and the sand extraction plant had taken over, so it looked like the moored boats were in the Sahara, completely surrounded by dunes. I knocked on the door of the barge, no one home, tried the tap - turned off, gave up and carried on towards Braunschweig (Brunswick in English).

Dock crane at Veltenhof KP220 MLK

High bridges crossed the cutting. The old “upside down” railway bridge was still there, and surprisingly still in use, Mike got a picture of a train crossing it. A dragonfly rested on the stern for long enough for me to turn the camera on and take a picture of it. A loaded Dutch 67m tanker, called Ina, went past at K 224. A WSA tug and pan turned across the canal and into the WSA mooring in an arm at Thune. The canal skirted the city of Braunschweig, which was located to the south of the Mittelland, on our left. We listened to Forces Radio in English. The woman said it was ten o’clock, our clock said eleven, so Mike asked Bill if the British forces in Germany work to British time or German. He said German, but the Navy always works on GMT, no matter where they are, which can make life interesting – a dawn attack could start at midnight! An extended péniche went past, 55m x 5.10m called Volga from Brugge, running east empty. We didn’t bother trying for water at Braunschweig motor yacht club, we didn’t get any there last year. I took photos of loading cranes at the wharves in Veltenhof

Rosy and passing traffic at Veltenhof

KP 220/219. The piling along the right hand bank at KP 217 was starting to buckle, it looked like they’d had a small landslip. WSA were at work investigating it. Two expensive-looking Dutch cruisers overtook us just before the junction with the Salzgitter branch, we bounced about in their wash for some time, they made much more wash than the 80m barges or even the pushtows! Badly designed hulls like that were (thankfully) unusual for Dutch boatbuilders. An aluminium open boat, powered by a large outboard motor was following them, it had WSA painted on the side. It pulled into the first section of wide water at the junction. The towpath was still

Overflow weir spilling water from the MLK into R. Oker

closed across the junction and had been partly excavated behind the piling. Access for the commercial moorings had been suspended, but the mooring we were heading for, at the Peine end of the wide, was still available for small boats. We winded and moored bows to bows with Rosy beyond the slipway. It was 12.40 p.m. I put aluminium reflectors in the sunny side windows, then made some salad for lunch. Helped Mike unload the moped off the roof and he went to get the car, he was back at 5 p.m. and I helped put the bike back on a roof that was hot enough to burn exposed skin so we left tying the cover down until later when it cooled down a bit.