Tuesday June 21, Lemwerder

 

Early morning on the canal

It’s been a great day, with pleasantly warm temperatures and blue skies. I had an early start, woke at 4.30 to go to the bathroom and the sun had just come up, although it was very chilly. Looked out and saw mist lying on the river, so grabbed my dressing gown and camera and beetled outside for a few quick photos before hurrying inside, and pulling the duvet on to get warm. And managed to go back to sleep!

I am learning to use Google Maps in conjunction with Jilly, just to double check that she is behaving and this morning discovered that one of the roads around the town of Sulingen was closed with road works, and Jilly hadn’t identified it! Pleased to be able to sort the route out before we started than having an issue on the road and trying to rectify it….in a hurry, which causes stress all round!

All the trip apart from about 15kms was on secondary roads with wonderful scenery. All very flat as we headed north along tree lined roads, through traditional villages and farmland. Everywhere the houses and farm buildings are built in red brick, with many having solar panels. The specimen trees lining the road are in many places very close and there are signs showing trucks hitting them, held my breath when we passed a big truck.

Fuelled up at one of the smaller villages for €1.99/litre, the cheapest we had seen and certainly less than on the main road. Stopped at Edeka for a small shop then onto a camping spot we had found on Park4Night at Lemwerder right on the Weser River with the huge shipbuilding company of Lurssen on the banks, they are very famous for building and refitting super yachts. Interesting we noticed a huge superyacht moored beside one of their buildings and a local could tell us it has been there for over a year and was owned by a Russian. Guessing it came in for a refit and they have no money now to pay for it. Although there seemed to be quite a few crew still on board doing maintenance.

We seem to be drawn to these locations and watching all the boat traffic is fascinating. On a slightly more frustrating note, and my photography mates will understand, my 24-105 lens started jamming this afternoon and it won’t move between 24 and 70mm. It is my main lens when I am travelling and will have no hope of getting it fixed while on the road. I do have my old wide angle, 17 – 35 and also my long 70-200 lens so will manage but will need to keep changing lens. Grrrr!!! 

…..since writing this have discovered more about the Super Yacht, have discovered it is named Project Blue and was launched in early 2022, has had sea trials and is due to be completed in late 2022….so the information we got about Russian owners was not correct….obviously local gossip!!

This barge was parked across the canal
all night.

Traditional farm buildings with solar panels.

Tree line roads.

And even some thatched roof houses.

Russian Super yacht

Wildflowers

Not bad for a free overnight stopover.