Up the Rhine

This morning we started our trip up the 'big rivers'. After negotiating the lock at Vianen, we turned starboard up the Lek. This river is quite busy at this point, as the commercial Amsterdam - Rotterdam traffic passes here. But a few miles upstream is the intersection with the Lekkanaal and after that it's very quiet.

Next comes the weir ('stuw') at Hagestein. This weir is normally closed, so you have to take a lock around it. At very high river levels / flows, the weir gets opened to control the river level. It was closed today:





So we were by ourselves in a big lock, which took us up 3m.

Next was the intersection with the Amsterdam - Rhine canal, which is part of the main commercial shipping highway between Amsterdam and Germany.
Fortunately, there is a traffic control post here: you report on the VHF and they guide you across by telling you to wait or to cross in front of the approaching commercial barges. That takes a lot of stress out of the crossing!
By this time, at Wijk bij Duurstede, the name of the river changes from Lek to Neder Rijn (lower Rhine).

Then another weir and lock at Amerongen, so another 3m up.

The river was still very quiet. But we saw some interesting ferries, so called 'gierponten'. These are ferries which are connected, by way of a very strong cable, to a little boat which is anchored in the middle of the river. The little boat act as a pivot point for a sort of 'pendulum' with the ferry at the end. The cable is supported by two more little boats, the whole arrangement looks like this:





Unfortunately you can't see the ferry itself very well in this picture, it's on the very left. I'll try to get another shot if we pass another gierpont tomorrow.

It's very pretty on the river, the sun was out every now and then:





Before 3 we got to Wageningen and we decided to call it a day and have a look around the town, which is best known by the fact that the German occupiers surrendered here at the end of the second World War in 1945.

Location:Wageningen