Paddling in Germany (hint: involves beers and sausage)

Hunting for geocaches in the middle of the Baldeneysee

I just about drowned in the flood of familiar sensations.

It was so awesome to get in a boat this weekend, to feel the waves under the keel and the wind on my face; to hold a paddle in my hand, pull the blade through the water and feel the boat accelerate, to twist the blade and feel the boat pivot – it felt like a hundred years ago, like Canada.

We live just above the river Ruhr here in Germany and all summer we talked about joining a canoe club or renting a boat but somehow we never managed it. Finally, this weekend, the first in October, we decided it was now or never.

I worked Saturday, and then, despite a promising forecast, Sunday dawned a little too uncertainly. The man at the kayak shop too did his best to talk us out of going – too windy, the water is 14 degrees, wah wah wah…

We listened, we went anyway and it was awesome. The sun came out full and forceful, the wind died away to nothing but most importantly: we were on the water.

We rented the boats in Kupferdreh, at the east end of the Baldeney Lake, a dammed up section of the Ruhr south of Essen. The lake is s-shaped, 500m across at the widest point and if straightened out, approxiamately 7km long.

In the quiet canal discussing the wisdom of entering the Darkness

It was Sunday afternoon and the lake was chock-a-block with sailboats and kayakers, paddleboats and every 15 minutes the big white river ferry came through. We hurried down the shore past the ferry dock and ducked into a little canal away from the crowds – a quiet sheltered corner – a great place for a cache…

Sure enough, tucked away in a little recess was a piece of plastic tupperware – we swung the canoe in sidelong and reached through a curtain of thorns to log our first canoe cache. I have found caches by kayaking to islands, by wading and swimming across rivers, and even by walking across frozen lakes, but never a drive-in canoe cache before. In one day, my first European canoe trip and my first canoe cache. Oh frabjous day!

At the far end of the small canal was a large tunnel – 10m wide, 4m high and disappearing into the darkeness – pitch dark – we drifted in maybe 40m – but as the light dimmed and dimmed and there was no light at all coming from the other end of the tunnel, the others lost their nerve and mutineed.

We turned around but agreed, that someday, with headlamps and flashlights, we’d go all the way through – the stream is the Deilbach, it’s springs up about 20km away in Wuppertal – the tunnel itself is about 500m long, passing under the autobahn A44. (Why is it everytime I reach one goal, I end up setting more?)

Heike displaying great balance as she reaches for a cache

From here we headed out onto the open lake. Following the GPS we crossed to the north side and paddled by a line of yellow posts with some kind of warning sign ontop – the words were bleached out and we couldnt read them – so we paddled on.

We maybe should have put two and two together when the big flocks of cormorants and blue herons flew up from their roosts in the trees along the shore. A beautiful sight but it made me a little uneasy to disturb them. The GPS led us farther out into the lake to one of the yellow posts. This one we could read:

Bird Sanctuary Area. Do Not Enter.

The cache we were headed for is actually called “Bordering on Illegal” – but I didnt understand why til it was too late. Heike stood up in the boat to reach a little vial-like cache container hidden in the yellow post – and suddenly it seemed like every kayaker on the lake came over to see what we were doing and to tell us to stay out of the bird sanctuary.

Thankfully they were so busy giving us instructions they didnt notice when Heike passed me the cache or what she was doing when she put it back.

My hearty crew mutineed at this point and would go no deeper into the darkness. Next time!

These first two caches contained the coordinates for a third which we quickly went after. The GPS led us to a pumphouse on the shore of the lake. The cache description had advised bringing a mirror along.

We groped and felt around under the floor but couldnt find the thing. Finally after the other two had gotten out to look from land, i tipped the boat over practically level to the water and grabbed our final cache of the day.

Having accomplished our goals for the outing, we headed back to kupferdreh and pulled up on the shore near a little biergarten – this is canoeing german-style – with beers, bratwurst and fries at a table in the sun.

The biergarten was full of cyclists and walkers – we were the only ones in PFDs – and from our table we could watch a steady stream of bikers, walkers and inline skaters making the 14km trip round the lake. too many people on land so we headed back onto the water.

the river was full too – of paddlers and motorboats – we headed up stream as far as an ancient mill – now the site of another biergarten – time for another break – and so was established the pattern for the rest of the afternoon – paddling in Germany is not exactly like paddling in Canada – but i could get used to it

[not only are we planning to go through the tunnel, we're also planning a longer run down the ruhr - from horst to kupferdreh is 10k, from hattingen its 20k - of course id love to do the whole 200km run from winterberg to duisburg but i dont know who would come with... ... any takers?]