Wednesday 8 August

Barleber See to Wischer

We awoke to steady rain that continued until about nine o’clock. We had breakfast at a small camp shop and then packed up our wet tents, leaving at about half past ten in light drizzle that eventually petered out completely as the day brightened and warmed up.

Almost immediately we were confronted by major construction works that cut right across our route. At the time we didn’t understand what was going on but now it all makes sense.

The Elbe Aqueduct was opened in Magdeburg on October 10, 2003. High-capacity barges and push-tows now proceed from the Mittelland Canal to the Elbe-Havel Canal and Berlin without having to drop down to the river Elbe, which offers limited depths.
http://worldcanals.org/

Building the Mittelandkanal started in 1905 and continued to Berlin via the Elb-Havel-Kanal. In order to get down to the level of the Elbe and then onto the Elbe-Havel-Kanal boats used a huge boat lift at the end of the Abstiegskanal Rothensee (i.e. Rothensee Descent Canal). After WWII there was no initiative to replace the boat lift that had now become too small to accommodate larger shipping and it was not until reunification that plans were made to replace the boat lift with a much larger lock system and to build a huge aqueduct over the Elbe. Work began in 2001, just when we were trying to get through. We couldn’t have picked a worse time.

First we had to get through the new lock works at the head of the Rothensee Descent Canal, which somehow or other Simon managed, and then onto normal roads that took us north under the Mittellandkanal. We were bowling along, relieved at having negotiated the construction site, when I noticed that the cycling shorts that I had festooned on my rear pannier to dry were no longer there. I turned back to see if I could retrieve them and eventually spotted them lying in the middle of the underpass beneath the Mittellandkanal, just as a large truck drove over them. I managed to get them back, very bedraggled and filthy. By this time Cedric and Simon had turned back to find me. We crossed over the Elbe at Rogatz and carried on along dyke-top cycle paths with block paving and cobbles with a warm following wind.

We came across an abandoned church without a roof, and a plaque explaining that Russian troops had cleared the village and had a military base there until 1968. We stopped a Jerichow to look round the monastery, founded in 1050, then back over the river on a motorway bridge with the wind blowing sharply across, passed Stendal and finally to a large lake campsite north of Arnim. We swam in the lake, cooked a meal on our camping stoves and slept well in our tents pitched in the pine forest.