Friday 20th May 2005 End of Ruda Woda to Iława

CLICK HERE for a map of today's route through the lakes

3.5º C overnight. Sunny with a chilly wind. Set off at 8.15 a.m. on to Ruda Woda lake. The  lake was surrounded on all sides by forest and it was a deep (the echo sounder went off –

either a bad bottom or very deep) winding, reed-fringed, long narrow lake. Mike did a short speed test. Up to 2,000 revvs and the best speed we could manage was 10 kph. It seemed very quiet, no birds about - not a swan or a duck in sight. Two men in a long narrow fishing boat, powered by an outboard motor, went past towing another similar boat, hugging the left hand bank. Out of the lake into a narrow winding shallow channel, 1.5m deep, dodging overhanging trees into the next wide lake. At 10.20 a.m. in Iłinsk lake (another deep one) we passed Marabut a trip boat heading towards Elblag. We turned left into another channel and met another trip boat as we turned in. Under a new bridge for the route 7 bypass and a railway bridge on the

outskirts of Miłomłyn, round some more winding bends and went under the old route 7 road bridge which was only 3.6m wide and 3.5m high and fitted with a single wooden clapper stop gate. Just beyond it was a small aqueduct over a stream. We came to a junction where the canal to the left went to Ostroda, but we carried straight on for Iława on the Iławski kanal, another narrow winding channel through woods past little farmhouses and under arched farm road bridges. Four shirtless youths were fishing where the canal had been narrowed to accommodate another stop gate. Suddenly we were in the middle of a cloud of red dragonflies, hundreds of them darting around us and way up into the trees. I hoped they were eating all the mossies that had started eating us. I made lunch, baked the last of our German part-baked long life buns and made some biscuits to bake after the bread had

White tailed eagle - Wikimedia photo by Jacob Spinks

cooked while the oven was still hot. At 1 p.m. we came to the end of the Iławski kanal and went into the first part of the long lake called Jezorio (lake) Jeziorak. By the road bridge a smiling old lady was sitting fishing, she asked where we were from (in Polish), she looked impressed when we said Engand. A white-tailed eagle swooped down to the surface of the lake, talons out, grabbed something and flew off to sit in a nearby tree. Magic! The lake was surrounded by trees and deserted as we ran south down the long narrow leg. To our right we passed a wider section with a campsite on the far distant bank, where a couple of sailboats were moored and another one was sailing. In the

far distance we could see a couple more sails going in the same direction as us, but several miles away. On past a small sailing club with a wooden building at the top of steep bank behind the moored yachts. The yachts that were sailing were not going far as there was very little wind. We turned a bend in the lake shore and saw a hotel with a bar and six moored yachts. As we rounded the next bend we were off our map - we needed the map that Hans sent to us by post that never arrived! On the left, along a low hill, there was a string of large detached houses set in well-tended grounds which stretched down to the edge of the lake. It looked like the banks of the Thames had been transported to Poland. Along the frontages were boat houses and moored fast speedboats. Hans sent a text - we’d just been talking about his missing maps. An invoice had arrived for the maps he’d got for Bill. They were already paid for so Bill said he would ring him back later. We passed another hotel with moorings in front of it. Mike put some paint on a small section of the starboard gunwale that he’d sanded earlier as the paint

had lifted and flaked. A small trip boat went past, its passengers waving enthusiastically, followed by a yacht without masts. A group of fourteen yachts were milling about, slowly. All but one did half tacks as we stooged slowly down the right hand side to keep out of their way, the exception went straight across our bows, tacked and sailed behind us. There’s always one! We were travelling at 7 kph, but Rosy was way off in front as Bill had got a move on. When we arrived at Iława Bill was having a mooch round looking for the good moorings that the German skipper of  Uhuru had mentioned. We passed a group of blue-sailed pram dinghies - kids having sailing lessons - and again there’s always one bright Herbert who sails right in

Panorama of lake Jewiorak at Ilawa - Wikimedia by MesserWoland

front of our bows. Then the cheeky little oik turned and grinned from ear to ear! Bill had found a concrete quay, just the right length, it was even equipped with mooring bollards. Excellent. Behind the mooring was a grassy bank sheltered by a few trees, where people were walking dogs and kids were playing. We moored alongside. It was 4.30 p.m. A yacht pulled alongside as we were tying up. Oh no, we thought, we’ve got somebody’s mooring. They were Germans, on holiday on a charter yacht, who had seen Bill on TV back home in Brandenburg. Fame at last, Bill! They stayed and chatted (all in German, but we could cope with that) for about ten minutes before motoring over to the far side of the lake. A group of teenagers came to sit on the grass under the trees and chat a couple of feet away from Rosy, so Bill went over to talk to them, a few spoke English, they were getting happy with a few bottles of alcoholic stuff. 

Thursday 19th May 2005 Below lift 3, Oleśnica to S of Małdyty

1.4º C Cold overnight, but sunny during the day. At 8.00 a.m. I walked up the slope with both stills cameras and the video camera. I walked up the bank and crossed the rail tracks to stand halfway up the slope on lift number 3, Oleśnica (otherwise known as Schönfeld) with a rise of 24.5m (the biggest lift of the five) over a slope of 350m. Mike gave Bill a hand. This time Bill wanted to try putting the ropes on by himself, with Mike doing nothing, to see if he could do it OK on his

own. They donged the gong. No signs of life. I took photos of the mill stream which ran over two small waterfalls. Mike shouted me to go up to the top and find out what was happening as there was no one at the “spotter’s shed” (the cabin on the crest of the slope where an assistant stands and gives directions to the winchman in the winding gear room next to the waterwheel - all good eco stuff this!) There was a small farmhouse and yard next to the winding gear and a group of

five men (and three small dogs) were stood around talking. Between me and them was a pen with two big noisy dogs. I shouted good morning to them and was ignored, so I shouted again and still got no answer, so I spoke to the dogs who quietened down a bit. I tried again, asking if there was anyone to work the lift, and one of the men said in English “ten o’clock” Oh! OK. We’ll hang about until then. Fine. I went back down the slope again, back to the boat. I told

Mike and Bill of our chauvinist farm worker/canal employees and went inside to make some tea. It was just 9 a.m. Around 9.30 a.m. a lady came half way down the slope to say they were ready, clang the bell when we were ready. Bill shouted us, so I grabbed the cameras and set off up the slope again, while Mike went to ride up the hill on Rosy with Bill. The video was playing up and wouldn’t zoom – Mike said tap it, I did and it worked. I took more photos as we 

worked the two boats up the slope. There were two lady spotters in the hut at the top. Neither one spoke any English, but we had a conversation anyway. The view from the top was splendid with Elblag way down in the misty distance. Fruit trees in bloom alongside the tracks made a good backdrop for the photos. I trekked back up the hill for the third time and said thanks to the ladies as I passed them. No signs of any of the men from this morning. I handed Bill

his camera back as we set off again along the next 2 kms long canal section. It was 10.30 a.m. The canal was narrower and wound between lovely little undulating low hills, into a cutting and diving under a road bridge covered with brand new navigation signs – width markers and a yellow diamond – how silly, where else could you go? We followed Rosy. Bill put the boat in the cradle, while we moored next to a steep sloping bank below lift number two, Kąty

(in German Kanthen) a rise of 18m over a 450m slope. The spotter this time was a pleasant older man who had two dogs with him. I took photos and video of the two boats. Mike wanted a zoom shot of the bows coming up and over the crest and I hadn’t got the long lens, so he climbed on to the walkway and dropped it down to me as the boats were going up the slope. (They'd never let you get so close to working gear like that in Britain! I had to step over knee

high moving cables!) I took shots from the bank and from the landing. The old chap said I could go in the winding gear room and take photos if I wanted. I shouted to Mike to bring the camera bag for the flash, etc, and join me as I dashed off down the steps (the bank alongside was one big carpet of cowslips) to look inside the room which housed the winding gear, big cable drums and the enormous waterwheel which powered it all. The

operator obviously took great pride in his job and was very pleased to show me the gear working. First he set the wheel revolving, then he swung two huge levers and control wheels to engage power from the wheel to move the cables which pull the trollies up and down the slope. Mike and Bill had only just tied up when I went back up the steps. It was midday when we started away from lift two. A trip boat was coming up the slope behind us. Ten minutes later it overtook Rosy and we carried on to the bottom of lift one and tied in the side opposite to the trolley, which was waiting to go up. The tripper went in and within seconds was banging the gong to haul away up the slope. Lift number 1, Buczyniec (Buchwalde), had a lift of 21.5m over a slope of 550m. This time Bill went up on his own and I rode on board Temujin for the first time since the bottom one, lift five. I took photos and video from the boat. Another tripper was coming down in the other cradle as we went up, and yet another was waiting for the cradle we were in when we got to the top. Suddenly there were people everywhere and cameras! We tied to the

tripper’s landing stage at 1.30 p.m. We’d risen from sea level by 99.45m on the five water powered lifts. An elderly Polish man came to talk to us in English. Mike went off with our camera to take photos of Rosy coming up the last lift. He returned just in time as yet another trip boat came through the bridge beyond the landing. We untied and moved on as the trip boat went to the landing to wait for Rosy to vacate the trolley. Bill wanted a booklet and some postcards, so we waited under the bridge (which had a single wooden clapper stopgate with paddle gear just like the gear on the German Finow canal, not surprising as the Prussians built it all). We asked Bill to get us a booklet and some postcards too. We moved off again just after 2.00 p.m. along a narrow, winding, reed-edged canal. The speed limit was 6 kph but we needed to do 7 kph for generating as I was doing some washing, luckily the water was deep so we made no wash. Changed the washing loads over at 3.30 p.m. as we sped off down Jezioro (lake) Sambrod, the first lake in the chain of western Mazurian lakes. There were lots of little wooden

bungalows atop a low bank along the left hand bank, each had its own wooden sentry box - an outside privvy. One ancient wooden two storey house deserved a photo, so I took one. Under a railway bridge into the next lake, it was wide and only 2m deep and there was cold north wind blowing. Threading through some islands by the village of Małdyty, a male marsh harrier hunted low down, close alongside the boat. A long train of bright blue and yellow coaches drew into the station in the town right by the lake. A lovely old house stood guard at the entrance to the next canal section, it windows were boarded up. An old lady wearing a flowery pinny and cotton trousers was standing fishing by the next bridge. We paused under the next bridge and Mike disconnected the drive as the washing had finished. It was 4.30 p.m. We went on as far as the end of the canal section to where it lead to a long wide lake called Ruda Woda – Red Water – and moored opposite a waterways house where there was another old speedboat with tailfins moored. It

was 4.45 p.m. as we tied to some tall old beech trees, a beautiful quiet mooring. 

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.  

Tuesday 17th May 2005 Malbork to jnc Kanal Jagielloński.

2.2º C Mild with hazy sunshine at first. Rain, windy and cold later. Bill went to the Post Office first thing, still no sign of his package from Hans. We set off downstream on the placid little river Nogat just after 9.00 a.m. At ten to ten we arrived at the first lock, Rakowiec. It was empty, the keeper filled it and we went in. Mike paid for the two boats 11,36 Zł (back to the old price) and then we descended. Surprised to see the Dutch boat, Uhuru, waiting below the lock as we left it. The German skipper said he’d been to Ostroda and the moorings were better at Iława, he’d also managed to get to Gdansk. He said he’d gone straight down the Wisła first and crossed the Szkarpawa canal to get to Elblag. He had been pushing on as he has to be home by 1^st June. We noted his home port on the stern of the boat was Lingen (on the Ems

– almost in Holland!). We wished him well and said we’d meet again no doubt. Below the lock the river was narrow with

Map of location courtesy of Wikimedia

broken topped dykes on either bank. Nesting black terns were hovering over the lily pads catching insects. We had an SMS from Hans, he told us that in Germany they keep Poste Restante mail for two weeks and asked what they do in Poland. We sent one back to say that EU regulations say post should be kept for one month, but there is no guarantee of that anywhere. It began to rain. We arrived at Mikałowo lock just after midday. A lady keeper had just arrived on her bike, with two dogs trailing her every move, and opened a gate for us. She'd come from a farm house two hundred metres further back up the river – the lock house was unoccupied and slowly rotting away. We asked about water. She replied OK, we could have some in containers from her house. No, but thanks a lot, we needed our tanks filling, we need a tap near enough for a hosepipe. The bottom lock gate looked really heavy, shame I couldn’t get off to help her. The paddles had looked hard work too. It was now pouring with rain and getting colder. We pushed on. Lunch under the brolly. We were really cheesed off with the weather by the time we reached the junction with the Jagielloński kanal. We turned right, under a bridge with stop gate and moored next to some piling beyond the bridge. It was 2.45 p.m. and I was soaked and cold. Mike put the satellite dish up and we got changed into dry clothes. We watched the weather forecast, rain was indicated for the next day all over Poland again. We had the central heating on, which Mike switched off last thing, but left the coal fire burning all night.

Monday 16th May 2005 above Biała Góra lock R Nogat to Malbork.

Heavy rain in the night. 8.2º C overnight. Grey, overcast, windy, a few showers and sunny spells later. Mike went to have a word with the lock keeper and found two dozen workmen in green overalls wandering around on the lockside. None spoke any English. One group of them said we could go through the lock in two hours’ time – and another group just kept saying yes,yes,yes! He came back to the boat and got on with a few jobs. At ten o’clock there was no sign of life on the lockside, so Mike went back up the flood protection bank to the lock and there was no one to be seen, they must have been on a tea break. At 10.45 they started to wind the

lock gates open, so we unlashed from the bank and fetched the plank in and took the two boats in still tied side by side. A cable was across the lock, two men on each side lifted it up to let us pass underneath. I put the centre rope round an inset bollard in the wall and Mike did likewise with the stern. Bill hopped off with a big bag of rubbish for the bins and had to climb over scaffolding to get along the lockside where the men had been replacing the brickwork. The lock keeper (he had blue overalls on) wound a paddle and we descended. I let the boat run forward so the

bows were close enough to a ladder for Bill to climb back down on to the boat. We dropped down 2.3 metres from the river Wisła (which was actually in flood) above, to a full-to-the-brim river Nogat below. It was 10.55 a.m. The Nogat was much narrower than the Wisła, with high flood protection dykes set close to the edges at first, but widening out later. The river was fringed with reed beds and beyond the reeds there were cultivated fields of colza already in bloom. There was very little flow, although the keeper at Biała Góra was running lots of water down off the Wisła. Three startled red deer galloped away across a field as we

approached them. I made a cup of tea and some sandwiches as we travelled the 14 kms to the next lock. We arrived at Szonowo at 12.45 p.m. No signs of life. We tied up in the lock mouth to wait for the keeper to emerge. Mike got off to find the keeper. A lady keeper made out a till ticket for us and wanted money, but Mike couldn’t understand how much. It turned out we hadn’t paid at the first lock – well no one asked us for any money! So we paid 25 Złotys for the two boats for two locks as we were short of change as usual and so were the keeper and her husband (what’s new?). The price should be 6,40 Złotys per boat per lock. More expensive than the Bromberg canal and Notec, who only charged us 5,68 Złotys per boat (Note the exchange rate was roughly 6 Złotys to the pound). Mike asked if there was drinking water available, no, not

there, two locks further on. We dropped down a further 1.7m and pressed on into Malbork. The town was perched above the flood banks, most of the houses were almost hidden from view. The red brick fortress built by the Teutonic Knights in the Middle Ages was very imposing. Took a few photos of Rosy with the castle as a background. We found a mooring quay marked with a “P” and tied up right by the castle gates. It was 2.15 p.m. It was quiet when we arrived, but soon there were coachloads of schoolkids arriving, crossing the footbridge to the castle and generally making a lot of noise. Mike suggested that Bill would get around the town better

on his bike than he would on foot, and he asked if Bill could collect our post, which he did. The post had arrived from the UK, but there were no maps from our friend Hans in Germany. Bill had found an internet café so the two of them went back into town to have a session on the internet. I sent Hans a text and he replied that he had sent the maps on the 23^rd April to Malbork as promised. The internet café was being run by a fifteeen year old girl and the place was full of twelve year old lads playing games on the PCs. They crowded round Mike and Bill like starving refugee kids, but it was information they wanted, not food. There were no printers, so Mike couldn’t get a copy of our April ‘phone bill. Bill had a message for us on his web site, which he told us was getting over 100 visits a day, the message was from our niece bringing us up to date with family news. We had no satellite TV so we watched the weather forecast on Polish TV - sunshine and showers.

Friday 13th May 2005 Brda lock to abv Biała Góra lock Nogat. 124 kms no locks

A cold night down to 2º C, but it was sunny - the break in the weather had arrived. Off at last! Mike was up at 5.30 a.m. to get ready for lock opening time at 7.00 a.m. At 6.45 a.m. a tug arrived, pushing a pan, and went into the lock, so we followed it in. Bill went off to pay for the lock and got back on board just before the keeper pulled the plug and we started to descend. We followed the commercial out of the lock

down the short channel to the Wisła. The gauge below the lock was registering another 5 cms drop in the water level. Once we reached the river Mike turned upstream, avoiding three fishermen in a small power boat, and checked to see how fast the river was flowing. He reckoned the flow rate was between five and six kph. We turned and ran downstream with revvs for 6.5 kph and did

11.5 kph over the bed. Started chasing bank markers, X’s on the left bank and crossing over to the +’s on the right bank. The pan and tug had turned and were heading back upstream to join up with the dredger, which was just above the bridge at Fordon. We crossed to the right by the dredger, then swung back to the left for the road bridge. A couple of waterways boats were

moored just downstream of the bridge on the left bank. There were lots of fishermen along the left hand bank and a couple of tiny sail boats moored on the right. I made a cup of soup to warm us up, the wind was bitterly cold, as we approached Chelmo, K802, the spires of the old town on the right bank and factory chimneys on the left. Under Chelmo road bridge at a few minutes before eleven o’clock. We passed a tug

pushing two pans, battling upstream against the current near Swiecie K811. There were cliffs along the left bank and a picnic area, which was occupied by a family, by the hills at KP815. The multi-coloured tower blocks on the hills of Grudziadz came into view. We zig-zgged back and forth across the river practically every kilometer. I made some coffee. Changed the film in the camera and took photos of the fortified town of Grudziadz as we went flying past it. The buttressed walls were topped with houses, it looked very impressive from the water. The wind picked up. A

parascender was attempting to take off on the right bank, the curled pink wing lifting into the air and descending again. On a wide stretch the waves started getting bigger, encouraged by the wind against the flow. A large hill on the right bank reached up to the giddy height of 87.8metres. A white tailed eagle was being persecuted by three brave crows as we passed the slopes of the big hill. The wind was very strong

right in our faces as we neared Nowe, where two tall churches stood on the hill. I took photos of some strangely formed flat-bottomed clouds. It was still windy as the river bends took us to the east with wooded hills on our left, we expected some shelter from the wind but got none. The anitquated ferry at Korzenieowo, KP 867, was out of action as the road on the left bank was under water. There appeared to be a smart

looking offline basin with boats moored in it just downstream of the ferry – maybe to be investigated on the way back! As we reached Lipianki the waves became more sploshy, but this eased off as we reared Gniew, another town perched on the hills on our left. This town had several interesting towers and a huge square building which was probably a monastery. Downstream of the town was another ferry,

Bill's photo of the boats moored on the Vistula
waiting for the stop planks to come out

also out of service as the road on the right bank was also submerged beneath the waters of the Wisła. It was 7 p.m. when we arrived at the junction with the river Nogat. Calamity! The lock was out of action, stop planks barred our way! We threw ropes around trees, called Rosy on to the inside and chucked a plank off the stern for the dog and Bill to get on and off. Bill went to have a look. He said they were doing maintenance

work. Mike went to investigate too but there was no one to ask when the stoppage would be over. We were very glad to be here but wondered how long we would have to wait for the lock repairs to be finished. Friday the 13^th!!