We spent the final two days of our time on the Masurian Lakes, cruising from Mikolajki to the south-westerly navigable extremity of the area, the twin villages of Ruciane-Nida, before returning to base at Mikolajki.
We were blessed with a wonderful sunny day on Thursday 15th October as we set out, initially south-eastwards along Lake Mikolajskie.
The wind was relatively light, but coming from a south-easterly direction, so we were cruising directly into it. Hence the small amount of spray on our windscreen! However, after about half an hour, we were able to turn right into the much narrower Lake Beldany where conditions were quite calm.
At the southern end of Lake Beldany, is one of only two locks on the whole navigable system. You can see that the lock keeper had given us the green light to enter.
Before leaving the lock, we had to pay a toll. We didn’t catch the Polish first time, so the lock keeper repeated himself, this time saying, ‘Sieben zloty, dreißig groschen‘ – 7.30 zl 🙂
After leaving the lock, we cruised on for another hour to the Pod Debem Marina, at the far western end of Ruciane-Nida, where we moored. Beyond this point, there are a further series of lakes but these are only available to non-powered craft.
Overnight, we experienced the first rain of our Polish trip. By the time we got up next morning, it had stopped raining, but it was cloudy for the whole of our return journey on Friday 16th October, with the occasional few spots of rain from time to time.
Then we had to pass back down through Sluza Guzianka. The photograph shows how the toll is collected 🙂 Upon payment, you receive a receipt which is also handed over in this same manner. I did get the impression that the lock keeper had posed for similar photographs to this, previously 😉
The lock is of a somewhat unusual construction with sloping sides at a 45° angle. There are a series of ropes which hang down the slope which you have to hold onto whilst the lock is in operation. After that, it was plain sailing, all the way back to Marina Miko at Mikolajki.
After a peaceful but chilly night – there was frost on the mooring pontoon first thing the next morning 🙁 , we set off from Gizycko, to cruise to the northern navigable extremity of the Masurian Lakes, the town of Wegorzewo.
There are two possible ways to cruise northwards to Wegorzego. We chose to take the shorter route which involves passing along a canal through the town of Gizycko. On this route, there is a nineteenth century swing bridge which is only open at certain set times. We set out from Ekomarina, in order to be at the swing bridge when it opened at 10.35 that morning.
We arrived a few minutes early. But when it was10.35, the light initially remained red as no less than four boats were first allowed through, travelling in the opposite direction! The only boat traffic jam we ever experienced during our time on the Masurian Lakes 🙂
After passing through the canal, first we cruised northwards on Lake Kisajno, before reaching the wide expanse of Lake Dargin. Here we had the whole lake to ourselves, with the exception of one small fishing boat.
We then passed under this bridge and a narrower channel that followed, to take ‘Mamry’ onto Lake Mamry, or the Mauersee as it is known auf Deutsch. An aerial photograph of this bridge is widely used to promote tourism on the Masurian Lakes. I saw it featured on an advertising poster displayed in the Prague Metro a couple of years ago, which first stimulated my interest to explore this area.
We reached Wegorzego early in the afternoon, and having found and paid for a suitable mooring in the port, we set off to explore the town. After a most enjoyable late lunch, we visited this Church, dedicated to St Peter & St Paul.
The whole Masurian Lakes area lie in what was formerly East Prussia, part of the German Reich until 1945 and predominantly Protestant. Under the Potsdam agreement, the borders of Poland moved westwards and this part of East Prussia was absorbed into the Polish state, with the German population being expelled.
As a plaque in the porch explained, (in Polish 🙂 ), this Church building had belonged to the Lutheran Church of the Augsburg Confession until 1945. Following the expulsion of German Protestants, it had been taken over by the Roman Catholic Church. Whilst its exterior remains fairly plain, the interior has been romanised! New stained glass windows have also been installed of which this is an example.
The next morning, Tuesday 13th October, we decided to have a long day of cruising, and return to Mikolajki. It had taken us around four hours to cruise from Mikolajki to Gizycko and around three hours to cruise from Gizycko to Wegorzego. Therefore, it should be perfectly possible to cruise from Wegorzego to Mikolajki in no more than seven hours which proved to be the case. We left Wegorzego at 09.10, and reached Marina Miko in Mikolajki, just after 16.00.
However, our return journey was not without incident, Early in our cruise that day, we passed this yacht. But rather than navigate again through the centre of Gizycko and wait for the opening of the swing bridge, we chose to use the alternative route west of the town. This involves cruising further south on Lake Kisajno, and then passing along a short canal under both a road bridge, followed by a railway bridge, before entering Lake Niegocin.
Whilst navigating this canal, we twice made contact with the canal bottom, even though I tried to remain right in the centre of the waterway. Clearly this was because of the low water levels we had been told about before setting out, though this canal had not been designated as one to avoid.
This second problem was that, once we were out of the canal and onto Lake Niegocin, there ceased to be a buoyed channel to follow, even though it had been there, two days previously! Magda had warned us that, from Thursday 15th October, the navigation authorities might start to remove the buoys for the winter. But this was Tuesday 13th October! So we navigated south across the lake, guided only by our map and visible geographical features.
We cruised further south through Lake Jagodne, where both green and red buoys were fortunately, still marking the correct channel. Then it was back through the four relatively short canals linking three lakes……
The Masurian lakes are located in the far north-east of Poland, not far from the border with Belarus, Lithuania and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. They consist of a series of moraine-dammed lakes, interconnected by a number of short, man-made canals. There are only two locks, both at the southern extremities of the navigable system.
The area has been popular for boating and sailing since the early 1920s. It is an amazing natural paradise and motor boats are prohibited from some areas, in order to protect the flora and fauna.
Mikolajki, where Marina Miko is located, lies at the centre of the lakes area. It is one of the main centres for visitors to Masuria, with a variety of hotels, apartments for rent, boatyards and restaurants.
When we finally arrived at Marina Miko, following our ‘interesting’ and expensive taxi journey, we were met by Magda and Jacek. Magda spoke virtually word-perfect German and some English. Jacek had some English. So most of our handover procedures and instruction, was conducted auf Deutsch, with translation back into English by Sybille, when I didn’t completely understand the German, and translation into Polish by Magda for Jacek, when Sybille asked something on our behalf, auf Deutsch 🙂
We discovered that we were not only, the sole hire boat leaving the marina that day, we were also the very last hirers of the 2015 season, even though the hire brochure states that there is availability for two further weeks, until the end of October. Magda suggested that we must be pretty hardy characters to be boating in mid-October in northern Poland, bearing in mind that the maximum temperature that day was 6° Celsius.
Two things were made to clear to us. Because of the lack of rainfall over the summer months – Poland having experienced in July and August, similar heatwave and drought conditions as the Czech Republic, water levels were up to one metre lower than normal. This meant that the whole south-eastern area, including Lake Sniardwy, the largest lake in Poland, together with the canal and lock leading to the town of Pisz, were off-limits because of the lack of sufficient depth of water. A number of other little bays off other lakes, were also unavailable for cruising, for the same reason.
Secondly, because it was the end of the boating season, there were now only a few places where we could moor overnight and have access to electric power and water. These were duly marked on our cruising map.
Fortunately, the good ship ‘Mamry’, our home for the following week, had a very effective gas-fired hot air heating system, which had been switched on for a few hours in advance of our arrival. However, after a brief instructional cruise, we tied up once more at Marina Miko, allowing us to take full advantage of the onshore facilities – shower and toilet, together with a 240 volt electric connection for the boat. That evening, we walked over the footbridge into the main part of Mikolajki, having our evening meal in a restaurant that declared itself to be ‘Russian friendly’, but only in English!
We then cruised the length of the much larger and longer Lake Jagodne, before arriving at this bridge, which spans a 100 metre long canal linking to the next lake, Lake Boezne.
Having moored on one of the floating pontoons at Ekomarina, we went to the marina office to announce our arrival. On payment of 54 zloty/CZK 350, we were allowed to connect to mains electricity, given swipe cards that allowed access to onshore toilets and showers, and which also gave access to another room with a washing machine! We decided to take full advantage!
We set out from Kraków on the morning of Friday 9th October, to drive to the small town of Mikolajki in the far north-eastern corner of Poland, aiming to arrive there around lunchtime on Saturday 10th. The centrepiece of our Polish adventure has been to spend a week, cruising the Masurian Lakes, on a hire boat from Marina Miko in Mikolajki. Handover of the boat was to be between 15.00 -18.00 on Saturday afternoon.
I was well aware that we would not accomplish the journey from Kraków to Mikolajki in a single day, which is why I had allowed nearly two days in our travel timetable. In retrospect, I’m very glad that I did. As it turned out, it could have very easily taken us a whole lot longer!
On Friday 9th October, I made a number of significant discoveries, or I was reminded of things I really should have already known 😉 Firstly, driving out of any big city takes time – driving out of Kraków certainly did! Secondly, driving along ordinary Polish main roads, also takes time – lots of it! Whilst the motorway from the Czech-Polish border near Ostrava, to the outskirts of Kraków, had allowed for very speedy progress, route 79 from Kraków to Sandomierz, did not. Lots of small towns and villages with speed limits and plenty of relatively slow moving trucks.
Travelling that day, also really brought home to me, just how big Poland actually is. What looks like a short hop on the road atlas, in reality, takes far longer than anticipated.
When we did finally reach Sandomierz, we then headed for Lublin, finally crossing the Wisla/Vistula river, whose valley we had been following from Kraków. Unfortunately, a section of bypass around Lublin, which is shown as being ‘under construction’ in our road atlas, was still under construction. Thus we battled our way into and out of Lublin during the Friday afternoon rush hour. Progress northwards after that, was a little quicker.
Once it got dark, we decided to head for the next major centre and find somewhere to stay. So when we reached the outskirts of Siedlce, we made for the town centre and spotted a sign for a hotel. The receptionist spoke excellent English and the price for a pleasant double room for the night with breakfast, was very reasonable. As the hotel restaurant seemed all but empty, we instead found a much busier one nearby where we had a most enjoyable evening meal.
The next morning dawned cold, but fine and sunny. Being Saturday, there were relatively few trucks on the road so we made quite rapid progress northwards. After about two hours of driving, we reached the town of Zambrów and decided to take a short break. We parked in a small square opposite a flower shop where a wedding car was being decorated as you can see in the photograph above.
But when we got back into our car to continue our journey, disaster struck. The ‘Carly’ refused to start! It turned over perfectly, so there was clearly plenty of life in the battery. But the engine refused to fire. We tried rolling it down the road to bump start it, but still to no avail.
First we rang the number for the National Emergency Roadside Service as given in our Poland guidebook, but it didn’t work. So we then rang 112 and a most helpful operator who spoke English, gave us the phone number of a local Zambrów breakdown service. He of course, didn’t speak English but somehow Sybille conveyed to him over the phone, where we were and correctly understood him say in reply, that he would be with us shortly. Twenty minutes later, a breakdown truck arrived.
The breakdown truck driver had previously worked in Germany for a short while and therefore spoke some German which aided communication. He rang his mechanic friend to say that he would be bringing a Czech-registered right-hand drive Renault Scenic to him shortly, and then duly took the ‘Carly’ and both of us, to the mechanic’s workshop.Cost 150 zloty/960 Czech crowns.
After about an hour of trying various things, the mechanic and his son conveyed to us that the problem was with the immobilizer. It was an electronic problem rather than a mechanical one. Despite phone conversations with his electronics friend, the mechanic couldn’t fix it. We would have to wait until Monday. All this was conveyed without any of us having any language in common. The similarities between Czech and Polish were of considerable help in our somewhat interesting conversation.
We were able to explain where we were travelling to and why – pointing to the picture of our hire boat in a brochure helped. The mechanic called a taxi driver friend who quoted between 375-400 zloty/2555 Czech crowns to drive us the 125km from Zambrów to Mikolajki and cover the cost of his return journey. We bit the bullet!
Within twenty minutes, the taxi arrived and we then transferred all of our belongings out of the ‘Carly’, and into the taxi. The journey that followed might best be politely described as ‘interesting’. At times our taxi driver drove at speeds of up to 140kph on roads with a maximum speed limit of 90kph. At the end of the journey, Sybille declared that she was in serious need of a double Polish vodka!!!!! But we made it to the marina in Mikolajki arriving at 16.10, still all in one piece – just! – together with all our belongings.
Update – You can find out how we were eventually reunited with the ‘Carly’ here.
Ever since moving to Prague just over seven years ago, Sybille and I have adopted the view that we should take full advantage of being based in Central Europe, to explore both the Czech Republic beyond Prague, together with neighbouring countries. So earlier this year, we decided that we would spend two weeks of my 2015 annual leave, visiting the Czech Republic’s immediate northern neighbour, Poland.
Our Polish odyssey began last Wednesday 7th October, when we set out to drive from Prague to Kraków. Ironically, although Kraków lies north-east of Prague, the quickest way to get there was to drive south-east on the D1 motorway to the outskirts of Brno before then heading north-east, passing around Ostrava and over the border into Poland.
For the first time in our travels, we used airbnb to find appropriate accommodation. Using their website, Sybille found us a studio apartment within walking distance of the historic centre of Kraków which also had secure parking for the ‘Carly’. We spent two nights staying in the apartment and the intervening day exploring the city.
First we visited Rynek Glówny, the main market square, where the title photograph and the following three photographs were taken.
Whilst in the square, we witnessed the filming of part of a TV series featuring my namesake, Ricky Gervais, with a drone being used to take pictures, and several ‘heavies’ to keep the crowds at bay!
We also visited Churches belonging to two different Roman Catholic Orders – the Dominicans and the Franciscans. This is the Dominican Church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Below is a photograph of part of the reredos within the Church, seeking to illustrate the Trinity, with God the Father portrayed as an old man with a long beard 🙂
We spent the last part of our day in Kraków, exploring the Kamimierz district, the former Jewish quarter. This area is far less ‘spruced up’ than the other central parts of the city and remains a poignant reminder that around 65,000 Jews from the city of Kraków and the surrounding districts, were murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War.
