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| Below Marienthal lock. Wentow kanal |
Sunny with hazy cloud. Breezy.
The Snails went for water around ten and as we didn’t really need any we didn’t
follow with the boat, so Mike and I took a walk over to chat while they filled
up. The crew off the DB were packing up ready to move too, they were going to
Himmelpfort. A couple from Berlin who were cycling and had been staying in the
Gästhaus - they had helped with the menu in the restaurant as he spoke very
good English - came over to chat and were most interested in the Snails
predicament.
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| Wentow kanal |
Waved au’revoir as the Snails set off to hopefully moor below
Lehnitz lock. Anne had just had confirmation of a mooring in North Freisland,
organised by some Dutch friends. We set off at 10.50 am and went upriver to the
junction with the Wentow kanal, about 300m. Threw a rope around a stump below
Marienthal lock and Mike went to find the keeper. A woman in her thirties
operated the lock, which was press button electric. Fore and aft ropes round
inset bollards in the steel piled wall of the little lock chamber (44m x 5.3m)
and we rose 1.9m.
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| The reeds close in - Wentow kanal. |
Said “Bis bald” (“see you soon” - as the lake is a dead end)
to the keeper and set off up a very narrow canal lined each side with reed beds
and white water lilies. The grassy banks were sloping and the houses of the
village of Marienthal spread out along the bank on the left until we reached
the road bridge. A railway bridge marked on the chart as a feldbahnbrücke had
long gone - just the abutments remained. The reeds crowded in on the channel as
we approached the junction with the lake and a few more houses peeped over the
reeds as we turned left with a big island called Ratz in front of us.
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| Ratz island at the start of Wentowsee |
There
were wooden cabins along the left bank among the reeds which looked like
converted boat houses, new ones had been added and on the right hand side there
was a mooring for small boats and lots of floating chalet-type holiday houses
attached the bank at their sterns, also among the reeds. The first part of the
lake was the widest and deepest, 3m according to the chart and there was
another boat mooring for small craft on the left as we headed for the first
narrows. Half a dozen small yachts were on a mooring on the right. The water
was turning olive green with floating algae (he guy off the little DB had said
not to swim in it as the algae makes people ill). More houses among the trees
on the left, the village of Wentow and on the right the hamlet of Ringsleben.
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| Lakeside cabins. Wentowsee |
Then the lake became more remote, no more houses or moored boats, a curlew (we
think) went yodelling overhead as we went on through the next narrows, heading
just west of north up the last stretch of lake. On the left there were several
floating sheds (mobile, they left mid-afternoon) moored under the trees with
people fishing. As there had been yellow marker buoys all along the left hand
bank we though that meant it was a nature reserve and there was no access. Hmm,
we could see cars parked among the trees and the loud revving of some off-road
vehicle as it went through the forest. Not a nature reserve then.
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| Bows tied to a fallen tree and anchors out from the stern. Wentowsee |
Wonder what
the yellow markers were for? It took us a while to find a spot to moor along
the right hand bank as there were lots of old rotten trees plus the wind had
picked up and was blowing quite hard from the south. Eventually we found two
recently-downed, substantial alder trees and I slung a bow rope round the
(almost) horizontal trunk and tied it, then helped Mike heave two folding
grapple anchors out off the stern towards the middle of the lake to stop it
trying to blow the boat bodily sideways towards the bank. It was 1.25 pm. Later
Mike threw a mud weight out from the stern towards the bank in case the wind
decided to change direction.
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