August 2022 – Part 1
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1st August saw us setting off for a short day of travelling further along the Havel River, with our first stop for a bridge and schleuse just a few metres away. What we hadn’t realised (even though we’d done a recce the previous day) was that this schleuse was self-operated, and so we sat patiently waiting for the gates to automatically close behind us and the lock to fill up, as has happened so far throughout our travels. Luckily though, between the three of us we managed to work out what was/was not going on, pulled the relevant levers to get everything going and then we were on our way again.
At this point, with no urgency to rush onward, we only traveled for an hour and a half before reaching the little hamlet of Marienthal Zehdenick and we decided to tie up at a pleasant-looking long grassy bank. A quick walk found nothing of interest nearby so we returned to the boat to spend time on some badly needed boat/window cleaning. What a way to spend a day! However, playing with Pip a little later I spotted a great little cafe less than 100 metres in the other direction – not our most observant day – so we headed over for a break before winding down for the evening.
After a nice, peaceful night, we continued our journey – passing through several more self-operated schleuses, thank goodness we now know what to do – eventually reaching the Brederiche Schleuse and mooring alongside another pretty grassy bank, also close to a beer garden (which we spotted almost immediately this time), and with some nice swimming spots for the dogs.
Next morning we made a very early start (7.30 am!!) to ‘beat the rush’ as the sun was already up, it was the start of the school holidays and it would be a gorgeous day for boaters everywhere. It turned out to be fortuitous that we had done this, as we were held up almost instantly at Schleusefurstenberg due to lots of other boaters starting early, and this trend went on throughout the day.
Finally though we arrived at Erlenbruche, a point in the pretty lake of Viltsee, and anchored up not too far from land, and Amy spent a bit of time in the water playing with the dogs. However, anchoring does require the inflatable to be prepared for the requisite trips to land for dog toilet breaks during our stay, and immediately Casper enthusiastically launched himself from Shensi into it. Maybe he was desperate, but he was definitely keen to get to land. This was Pip’s first encounter with the inflatable and she took quite a bit of persuasion to get in, but we got there in the end, and I had the unenviable job of rowing them to shore later in the evening for their final toilet break.
As Amy was due to leave us on 5th, we could only spend the one night in this lovely location, and for her penultimate day we travelled in very, very hot sunshine to the town of Waren for her final night with us, so that she would be close to the local train station and ready to catch the early train to Berlin airport for her journey to Vietnam on the next leg of her travels. We were able to spend a little time looking around the town with her (and checking out the route we would need to take to the train station in the morning), after which we settled down for the evening to prepare ourselves for the next day’s early 6 am start. We woke up to a showery day, a little overcast, but that did make the walk to the station much more pleasant than the previous day’s blistering heat, especially considering the huge rucksack that Amy had to carry. and the next morning another early start. After waving Amy off we spent another day and night in Warren to explore a little more, and the next day we set off to visit some of the much talked about lakes of Germany, anchoring in a lake near Malchow a couple of hours later. Once again, we duly piled the dogs into the inflatable for a spot of ball throwing on land – the clearing was idyllic, very isolated and easy access to the land from the inflatable. Then we realised that the water was so shallow that in fact Nicki and I could actually walk from the boat to the land, and the dogs could swim alongside us. Result – easy access to land in lovely warm water, without having to row across every time. The weather was perfect as well, and we ended up spending four days enjoying ourselves here, alternating between swimming, walking through water and generally relaxing.
Before leaving the lake we made an attempt at washing the boat (and the anchor) and clearing off the bugs, and then made our way to the little town of Plau am See where we had planned to moor up along the town quay. Unfortunately there weren’t any berths available, so we headed into the Schleuse thinking we’d just carry on to the next mooring we could find, but the lock keeper very kindly directed us to an unmarked staging area just the other side of the schleuse. It was not only perfectly placed for visiting the town, but was a free mooring.
We then wandered into the town, passing along small cobbled streets with interesting old buildings, and along the waterfront (where we had expected to moor) to see what we were missing – as it turned out, our mooring was a much better site so we were very pleased. On our exploratory walk we came across a fabulously quirky little cafe, and from the minute we looked inside we were hooked by its decor, not to mention the cake selection.
Moving on again in the morning, we had a very pleasant two hour cruise through the beautiful green, leafy waterway (somewhat narrow in places though) until we found what appeared to be a disused quay complete with stacks of old timber, where we quickly moored up for the night. There was a small campsite nearby, which we visited briefly, and a nice woodland walk for the dogs.
From here we pushed on to our next target, Lubz. This mooring was at an apparently defunct jetty (previously used by passenger boats) with its own little ‘park’ area, and although it was taped off it was still usuable by pleasure craft. We were very comfortable here, and were able to restock our shelves at a nearby supermarket, stroll around the small town and visit the small yachthaven (where we came across a Welshman on his boat). Returning to the boat from our shopping trip, we were delighted to find that a local property owner had kindly left us a huge tray of peaches. We thanks him when returning the tray but unfortunately that was it was he did not speak English.
A little later on, a German couple – Kai and Maryam – and their daughter, Emma, moored up just a little further along from us and called round to say hello. We got on well and ended up traveling to Schwerin with them for the next couple of days as that was their home port, and also our next destination. As this would mean an overnight stop on the way, we all ended up at a nice little haven on the Muritz-Elde Wasserstrasse at Garwitz.
Leaving Garwitz we carried on down along the Slurwasserstrasse, only stopping when we reached a low bridge that only opens up every 90 minutes, and we had just missed the previous opening so had to sit and wait it out. From this point we traveled for about two more hours, until finally Schwerin could be seen ahead of us – Kai had identified a really good mooring location for us, free and with easy access to town, and not one we would have found on our own. The water was very clear and perfect for swimming, which we needed in the heat by then, with a small area nearby so that the dogs could easily access the water.
