0.3°C Sunny spells and clouds. Only 3°C
when we got up, but the sun soon lifted the
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| Misty canal - view from our back deck |
temperature into the low teens. We
put the moped on the roof using a plank, then covered it and roped and locked
it down. One swallow was steaming up and down the mooring! There were lots of
mossies hatching out, clouds of them as I walked down the wet side gunwale. Set
off at 9.30 am with an audience; a cyclist on the road bridge, two men on the
bank and a guy leaning out of the house window by the boat, they all smiled,
waved and said good morning. Made a cuppa and sat out in the sunshine. At KP103
the WSA were busy edging the banks with rocks to slow down bank
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| WSA added rocks to the canal banks Oder-Spree-Kanal |
erosion from
the wash of the big stuff they’re expecting when they finish building the new
locks. There were birds of prey in abundance, first an eagle then several black
kites. At last Mike got to play with the new radio we bought for the engine
room and we tried out the new 64Gb thumbdrive that had all the music we’d
copied so far (nearly 200 albums). On random we reckoned it had more than 3,000
tracks to choose from. Mike was pleased with it. At 10.45 am we turned left on
to the Speiskanal running down to the lock at Neuhaus. The trees along the banks
of the canal showed lots of signs of beaver damage and the largest trees near
the canal
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| Workmen before they spotted us and trees protected from beaver attacks |
all had wire mesh around their bases to keep the rodents at bay. A
couple of blokes with a tractor watched and waved as we went by – you could see
that look on their faces “Well, I’ve
never seen anything like that before!” Tied to the floating box above the lock
and Mike went to find the lock keeper. He was just emerging from the workshop
next to the lock house. The young man pressed the buttons to drop the road barriers
and lift the bridge as the top end lock gates were opening. This lock is rectangular
with offset gates, built to pass two working boats at a time and ensures that
the
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| Above Neuhaus lock on the Speiskanal |
first one in is the first one out as it enters through gates on the left
side of the chamber then has to move over to the right to let the second boat
in alongside him but the first boat is now facing the bottom end gates which are
on the right hand side of the chamber. There are still quite a few locks like
this about, mostly in the Netherlands, but only on what we’ll consider as “remainder”
waterways, ie with little or no commercial traffic. I put our centre rope
around a bollard on the left hand wall and we dropped down about
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| A white-tailed eagle in flight. R Spree |
a metre. We
crossed the little Wergensee lake and went on to the river Spree which flows
off to the right and we went left, heading upstream. The Spree is a lovely
little river here, winding through open farmland edged with alders or through
bits of forest. Within ten minutes we saw two mink ambling along the edge of
the river bank, fields with flocks of geese grazing and loads of duck and swans,
plus a stork flew overhead. Two cruisers went past heading downstream, Ramona
at KP110.5 and Ahette
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| Mink, checking the river bank. |
at KP112, while I was cooking bacon and egg butties for
lunch. There was a coot fight going on in the little lake called Oegelnischer,
they ignored us completely and kept on sparring. There were several fishermen
on the banks as we neared the town of Beeskow. On into the town, passing a huge
factory on the outskirts. The lock at Beeskow used to be a big bottleneck as it
worked automatically every half hour whether there were any boats in it or not,
on the hour it filled and on the half hour it emptied – but not anymore! Now it
works like the other DIY German locks and is automatic, pull the blue rod out
from the
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| Control rod abv Beeskow lock. R Spree |
wall and it operates the lock, same thing when inside the chamber and
we went up less than half a metre. All through the town there were moorings for
small boats at various restaurants and cafés, then at the far end of town there
was a large marina (virtually empty) but we carried on round the next bend then
tied the bows to a dead tree and chucked two small anchors out from the stern
and had a great wild mooring next to reed beds one side and a small lake on the
other. It was 3 pm. Mike added a mud weight to keep the boat next to the reeds.
We hadn’t been tied up long when a fisherman went past in a small open boat
with an inboard engine. There were marked nets on the far side of the lake, but
not his, as he went straight on heading into Beeskow.
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| Beeskow lock and weir. R Spree |
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