Poland

[BD3Bill]

Anybody been boating on the canals & rivers of Poland ?

 

[Pluto]

I have only travelled on the Elbag Canal and its inclined planes powered by water wheels, and on the Oder in the Wroclaw (Breslau) area, but have visited almost all the other waterways in Poland, apart from the Augustowski Canal. The Oder is mostly built to the old Prussian 1000ton standard, while the Bygoszcz Canal was enlarged to 600 ton standard in the 1930s. The Gliwice Canal was also enlarged at this time as part of the proposed waterway link between the Oder and Danube, and was known as the Adolf Hitler Canal. There was a short canal between Gliwice and Chorzow with inclined planes and a tunnel into a coal mine based upon Worsley. Another 1930s proposal was the Masurian Canal, on which construction began but was never finished. You can still find the remains of concrete locks in the forests. The Masurian Lakes have long been an area for leisure sailing, and there are short canals connecting some of them. Another small canal can be found linking the Bydgoszcz Canal to the River Warta.

 

Although rivers like the Oder had been navigable for small boats for many years, canal building really began with the Bydgoszcz Canal in the 1770s, when the Prussians wanted good links to their border with Russia after Poland had been divided between Prussia, Russia and Austria. The Gliwice Canal followed shortly after to connect the growing Upper Silesian industrial area with Berlin, and the first major improvements of the Oder took place at the same time. As with much of Poland, the transport infrastructure has been influenced by the partition of the country, with waterways in the east mainly associated with links between the Baltic and Black Seas, while links to Berlin dominated those in the west.

[GUMPY]

Bill took Rosy to Poland, scroll down through this to after intermission 4 and links are there

http://www.billybubbles.demon.co.uk/journey/index.html

[Tam & Di]

Anybody been boating on the canals & rivers of Poland ?

 

 

No, but we did attend a conference there a few years ago to advise them on certification for steerers. Polish nationals were caught in a complex system of requirements which were a inheritance from their communist past. They do however accept an International Certificate of Competence (ICC) for visiting craft.

 

Tam

[BD3Bill]

Cool, thanks for the replies folks!