Bears Abroad - A Cruise Down the Rhine (in 2023)

 

It was a great honour for this Small Bear to put together a presentation for our IWA branch in October this year, all about our journeys so far on the waterways of Europe. 

I have already written about our journey on the Rhône, but I thought it might be nice to share some of our other adventures, so here is a post about our journey on the Rhine.

We bears - Hanley, Endon and I - and our human guardians Polar and Grizzly, travelled out to Basel in Switzerland by train to meet our cruise boat.  We went through a huge lock before bedtime and probably some more during the night on our way to our first stop at Strasbourg the following morning, which was our first proper look at a very big inland port, where the Rhône-Rhine Canal and Marne-Rhine canals reach the Rhine.  

  

We realised that the Rhine was a much busier commercial waterway than the Rhône had been, although this part turned out to be quiet compared to further downstream.  As on the Rhône, the Rhine locks are part of massive civil engineering works including diversion canals and huge hydro-electric power stations. 

Endon Bear was chosen to enjoy the first adventure ashore, a trip to the Black Forest – with gateau, of course! 

 

He visited an area around a lovely but very deep lake called the Mummelsee, where legends say mermaids used to live.  Endon saw a statue of a mermaid and lots of super carvings, but his favourite part of the journey was seeing the forest itself and the pretty houses the local people live in.

 

Hanley Bear got to visit Speyer the following day, which is an ancient city with a fine cathedral and old city walls.  He found the best way to see the city was from Grizzly's backpack, as Polar needed to take her big camera in her bag.

 

I had a trip to Heidelburg in the afternoon, visiting a big ruined castle up on the top of the hill that overlooks the city, before looking around the centre and exploring the riverside area.  It was a very beautiful old city and I was lucky to see it on a gloriously sunny day too. 

All three of us also had adventures aboard the ship, including a game of deck quoits with human guardian Grizzly, where we sat on the quoits, and eating cakes at afternoon tea.

 

After Strasbourg, we didn’t see any more locks or canalised sections of waterway, as we were cruising on the great river itself.  The most spectacular part of the journey was through the Rhine Gorge.

 

There were castles everywhere and, according to the captain of our ship, in the olden days lots of them were owned by bad people who robbed travellers on the roads and on the river, so it was a very dangerous journey.

 

Because there is a strong current in the river through the gorge, it is still quite a risky journey and special boating rules apply to allow boats coming up stream to choose which side of the river they want to use.  If they are going to be passing on the wrong (starboard) side, they put up a special blue board by the ship’s bridge to let other craft know and the oncoming boats do the same to show that they have seen and understood the signal.  The captain told us that they also send automatic radio signals to each other. 

We bears thought this was a very clever idea and started looking out for blue boards on our boat and the others.  We saw a very special boat, the steamer Goethe, which has been restored after spending many years sunk in the river after being bombed during World War 2.

 

We all visited Koblenz after that and had an exciting cable car ride across the Rhine to the fortress overlooking the city, where you get a marvellous view of where the river Moselle joins it.   

There were absolutely huge freight boats on the river now, often big tugs pushing three or four big container barges, and the railway lines on both sides of the river were very busy too.  Around 400 boats use this stretch of waterway every day!

Hanley Bear had the first of two unusual railway journeys the following day, as we stopped at Königswinter, where a little rack railway took him up to a great viewpoint above the river, with mountains to the east and the cities of Bonn and Cologne to the west and north.   

We spent the following morning in Cologne and I went ashore with our human guardians to see the Cathedral and famous Hohenzollern railway bridge, although we found Hanley Bear had stowed away with us when he heard that we were also visiting a brewery!

          

Heading north from Cologne, the development along the river banks got much more industrial and less picturesque, although it was still interesting to see all the different types of boats on the move.   We had a very long journey overnight and, when we woke up, we found we were in Amsterdam!

I enjoyed looking around this very pretty city with human guardian Polar, quite early before it got too busy.  I loved the canals, which are kept clean by flushing fresh water through every morning, and all the elegant houses and interesting houseboats – but it was the wrong time of year for tulips!

Hanley Bear had a different adventure, as he went north out of the city for a trip on the Medemblik Steam Railway.  This ran across very flat countryside, where they grow tulips in the spring, to the coastal town of Hoorn.  Hanley’s favourite part of the journey was crossing a motorway by level-crossing, with six lanes of road traffic stopped to let the little train pass!

We all had a marvellous time, but our holiday was almost at an end – and so is my little article.  But I will tell you about our second visit to The Netherlands in another post and this time there will be plenty of tulips!

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