{"id":1498,"date":"2026-09-28T18:46:33","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T18:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2026-09-28T18:48:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T18:48:26","slug":"elblag-canal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/09\/28\/elblag-canal\/","title":{"rendered":"Elblag canal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’d booked a boat trip along the Elblag Canal, as it’s got a unique feature I was keen to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The start of the journey could’ve been on the Norfolk Broads, with the flat landscape, and the channel opening up into wide, shallow lakes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was very peaceful, though rather chilly on top of the boat.  It was still early though, and by lunchtime it was another pleasantly warm day<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a few hour’s cruising we came to the canal’s unique feature:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rather than having flights of locks, the canal has a series of inclined planes.  The boats sail onto a carriage on rails and are then winched up (or down) the slope by water power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Winch at the bottom of the slope<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Into thee carriage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Starting the ascent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Passing the (empty) carriage coming downhill <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Nearly at the top<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are five of these on the canal, and we climbed them all in the space of a few hours.  There’s more detail on the canal on the Wikipedia<\/a> page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once we got to the top, there was a wait of an hour or so before the bus to take us back to Elblag. There’s a small museum about the history of the canal, which I had a look around.\u00a0 There’s some cleverness I’d not appreciated about how the carriages make sure the boat floats over its whole length when it re-enters the water.\u00a0 It also gave chance to see a boat using the system from the shore:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s something I’d wanted to see for ages; I can’t remember where I first read about it – it was somewhere online, possibly Atlas Obscura<\/a>.   At one stage I was considering doing this trip from there to Sicily, so I could go from a boat that goes on a train to a train that goes on a boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I got to Gdansk (for the second time – but in daylight this time) about 5.  I was pretty tired, not having slept particularly well on the sleeper (and with the early wake-up at about 0530 for Gdansk)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a quick nap I had a brief wander around the city. I’m not sure what my plans for tomorrow are yet, but it looks like a very pretty city:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ugh, love locks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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I’d booked a boat trip along the Elblag Canal, as it’s got a unique feature I was keen to see. The start of the journey could’ve been on the Norfolk Broads, with the flat landscape, and the channel opening up into wide, shallow lakes: It was very peaceful, though rather chilly on top of the READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe2026"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1526,"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions\/1526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.mawds.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}