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| Cruisers in Sulfeld lock |
Hazy clouds, a few brief glimpses
of sun, getting hotter (outside max 37.9°C). Rain later. Set off at 10.20 am
with the gennie attached to the engine to do some washing. It was only 3kms to
the lock at Sülfeld and we only had a short wait alongside Snail as a
commercial and a cruiser came up the left hand chamber (right hand one wasn’t
working) and we followed a tug and pan plus two German cruisers into the lock,
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| Top end gates of Sulfeld lock |
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| The queue of commercials arriving below Sulfeld |
another cruiser followed us in. Mike sat on the roof to move the centre rope
down the bollards in the wall as we dropped down 9m while I made some tea.
Below the lock there was a long queue of commercials building up. Norderstadt
and Saturnus, both loaded 85m boats went for the lock to go up. Granit (another
85m loaded boat) started moving towards the lock and a cruiser called Liberty
(a three decker) was trapped behind it as an empty called Eimicheit started to
overtake the loaded boat.
There was room in the lock for the cruiser so he
powered round the empty and aimed for the lock before he got shut out.
Einigkeit arrived to wait in the queue closely followed by Axioma and a Polish
tug with two pans full of gravel (82m & 32m pans pushed by a Bizon tug from
Wroclaw), then Labe 21 a loaded Czech boat from Decin and a very smart German
cruiser.
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| VW factory at Wolfsburg |
Through Wolfsburg, past the VW factory and its trip boats and the
little haven of Motorboot Club Wolfsburg where we moored overnight once to go
and do the VW factory tour. Mike spotted some VW 4x4s doing the test track on
the right hand bank, so I took a few photos. The washing had finished and we
drifted while there was no traffic about and Mike took the drive plate out.
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| VW 4x4 test track Wolfsburg |
Anne had spotted from our copied maps that there was a water point at KP256
Rühen and she did some washing too, but when we got there there was no
electricity so the key couldn’t activate anything. Put the hosepipe away again
and carried on. The café was still there just beyond where they’d installed the
new tap in a box, previously it had been just a simple tap on the wall. Another
empty pan and tug went past as we set off to follow the Snail. An old East
German boat went past with a distinctive square wheelhouse, this one was Calbe,
a tanker from Tangermünde on the Elbe.
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| Moored at Bergfriede |
At 3 pm we crossed where the old border
used to be – The Iron Curtain at one time – no signs of where it used to be
now, fences had gone before we first went to Berlin and the watchtower that had
been there had now also gone. Just trees and more trees. At KP262 a loaded 80m
boat called Martha from Berlin-D went past, the skipper reclining on a sun
lounger on his back cabin roof – he waved as we went past. Polish tug Fabico-3
from Szczecin (we’ve seen him before) went past at KP 265, pushing 2 pans full
of gravel. At Bergfriede we moored either side of the passerelle at the start
of a long row of forty one dolphins (810m) for commercials, on the bit reserved
for boats shorter than 35m (which was much shorter than 35m!) It was 4.30 pm
and getting hotter but soon it started raining - nice.
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