A SUP for Sore Eyes
I had to have an emergency operation for a torn retina, and for the next week while it recovered I was forbidden from reading, using screens, or any kind of close-up work. I was told that the ideal thing would be outdoor activities where my eyes could rest on distant views; so I reckoned that a peaceful SUP outing, with the wide horizons on the lake, would be literally "just what the doctor ordered".
When Caroline and I lived in Switzerland, we often used to take our inflatable SUP boards by public transport to lakes all over the country. We had never yet tried this in Germany since moving there in 2018, for a variety of reasons - not least because the public transport network in Germany is much less comprehensive and much less user-friendly than in Switzerland. As it turned out, today's trip to the Beetzsee - actually a chain of interconnected lakes, north-east of Brandenburg an der Havel - provided a case study on this very point!
The problems started half an hour before my planned departure, when I tried to buy my ticket using the app from VBB - that's the regional transport network for Berlin and Brandenburg. (I decided that a few quick clicks in the app would be less bad for my eyes than trying to focus on the ticket machine screen on the moving bus after boarding. Buying tickets in cash from the driver is so pre-pandemic!)
Two things quickly became evident: the app refused to sell me a ticket because of a supposed problem connecting to my user account; and the bus I had intended to catch was cancelled, so I would have to catch the next earlier one, which left in ten minutes! Our house is 4 minutes' walk from the bus stop - or a bit longer when lugging a SUP bag - so I literally only had time to pull my shoes on and rush out of the door. Thank goodness I had got all my kit packed and ready well in advance! I caught the bus by the skin of my teeth, and then had to use the on-board ticket machine after all.
At Potsdam main station, the trains were running late, and the train before my intended one hadn't left yet - it eventually left less than 10 minutes before the original one was due. This meant it was crowded with 2 trains' worth of passengers, but also gave me a bit more time to find the correct bus stop at Brandenburg an der Havel, where I wasn't familiar with the station layout as we haven't made connections there before.
The bus journey passed uneventfully until the moment when my stop appeared on the "next stop" indicator - and then disappeared again before I had time to press the buzzer! I went to speak to the driver ... it turned out that the stop I wanted was not merely a request stop, but a "request-diversion-of-the-bus" stop, as the village of Ketzür is served as a spur off the main bus route, and only on demand. It seems that I should have informed the bus driver when I got on, so that he knew he had to make the detour. Nowhere had this been explained - neither in the online timetable when planning my route, nor in any signage on the bus or at the stop where I got on! Luckily, the bus had not yet gone past the turning-off point, so the driver was able to oblige and take me there. I then wondered what you are supposed to do if you want to get *on* the bus! After getting off, I had a look round and found a temporary laminated sign on the bus stop, explaining that you have to telephone a certain number at least *one hour* before the scheduled departure. Tough luck if you turn up at the end of a long hike, having planned your journey online and thinking that you've done well to reach the bus stop with 10-15 minutes in hand; or if your phone is out of battery or out of coverage ...! (Not to mention if you are a foreign tourist who doesn't understand complicated explanations in German!)
Having negotiated the labyrinthine German public transport system - and survived! - I found Ketzür looking idyllic in the sunshine, with its a preserved wooden windmill, a cider-making shed, storks nesting on the hose-drying tower at the village fire station, and a grassy lakeside bathing meadow with a cuckoo calling from the nearby trees.
I was able to take my time over setting up - pumping the board gently to avoid shaking up my eyes, and pausing to enjoy a coffee from my flask - while three separate pairs of cyclists came, stopped and went on the adjacent long-distance bike path, and a man with a small inflatable boat launched it, returned to shore with outboard motor trouble, and finally launched again just as I was also putting to sea; I was quite worried that he would collide with me, as he only seemed to be paying attention to the motor, not the surroundings!
I had been a little bit concerned at the breeze which was ruffling the leaves in the trees and apparently gaining strength even in the time it took me to get ready. The forecast had been for a maximum of 8km/h all day - from the east - which had influenced my route planning and indeed my decision to go at all. We consider 15km/h to be a working maximum with our inflatable boards - as they have a fairly high freeboard and are easily pushed off course, especially crosswind - and I estimated the wind strength was about that already.
Having got this far, I decided to set off anyway and see how I got on. I'd planned my route to start out against the wind, aiming to reach the village of Päwesin at the eastern end of the Oberer Beetzsee, but with the option to turn back at any point and let the wind blow me back again if I was getting too tired, or ran out of time. I immediately found it quite tough going as my first heading took me somewhat crosswind, in a south-easterly direction across open water with no shelter, and finding myself being pushed towards a lee shore (every mariner's nightmare!). Working hard to stay on course, I soon made it into the sheltered U-shaped channel leading to the Oberer Beetzsee, and was able to relax a bit and enjoy the sights and sounds of reed warblers in the reeds alongside the channel, numerous herons passing overhead, and another cuckoo calling and flying between the trees. The channel is crossed by a disused railway bridge, part of a cycle trail which Caroline and I have ridden along numerous times, and now here I was seeing the view from the waterway for a change, having always thought that it would be a fun place to go by SUP!
Emerging from the channel into the Oberer Beetzsee lake, I had the large island "Möweninsel" directly in front of me (photo at the top of this article). I decided to leave it to port, taking the more sheltered water between the island and the village of Lünow on the mainland, rather than the side facing out onto the open lake. Möweninsel means "gull island" but there were no seagulls in evidence - plenty of geese and ducks, though, along with some coots, grebes, and the ever-present reed warblers trilling away along the shoreline. I was amazed to see a pair of huge white-tailed eagles circling further out over the lake.
After passing Lünow, I had to leave the shelter of the coastline and strike out across open water. The wind had strengthened a bit more by this time and backed to the NE, meaning I was headed directly into it, which although it slowed me down was actually much easier on the arms and shoulders than having to battle to hold a course when going crosswind. Although I found it hard going - lacking fitness as this was only my third SUP trip of the year - I was determined to reach Päwesin in order to make a reconnaissance of potential launch/landing sites for a future SUP outing. Päwesin is easily reachable by bus (in fact it's the terminus of the bus line I had taken to today's start point) and would open up further options, including one more lake linked by a channel to the north, which was too far to include in today's route. Looking at the map and satellite photos, it looked as though there might be access to a launch site near the road bridge, but was impossible to be sure as many of the lakefronts around here are either private, overgrown, or otherwise obstructed.
The bridge, as it turned out, spanned a very narrow channel with high banks protected by palings - too high for us to lift a SUP board up & down easily. There was a possible landing spot just beyond the bridge, but the mosquitoes were voracious (I came home with several nasty bites), and the graffiti and broken glass suggested that the spot was a favourite haunt of the local ne'er-do-wells. Although it would technically be *possible* as a launch site, it didn't seem all that desirable.
I had intended to have my second coffee break while landed at Päwesin, but the mosquitoes forced a hasty rethink! Luckily, there was a larger and more open grassy area a little further downstream towards the lake, where I was able to land and have my snack without being snacked on - and I found it was also connected to the road by a good passable track without any gates or "private" signs. So that's the launch site sorted for future reference.
By the time I'd finished my coffee break, I was starting to worry about my timings, having taken longer than expected both for the upwind paddle to Päwesin, and for the shore reconnaissance there. My plan was to backtrack past my start point at Ketzür and continue westwards as far as Radewege, another village on the next section of lake (through another connecting channel), which had the twin attractions of a bus stop and a lakeside restaurant which was actually open, as I expected to be hungry after a long paddle! Many German restaurants are closed on Mondays ("Ruhetag Montag"), to give the staff a break after a busy weekend, and although there is also a restaurant right beside the beach where I launched in Ketzür, at this time of year it's only open at the weekend.
Calculating my expected speed/time over the distance, I saw no chance whatever of achieving my Plan A (late lunch before catching a 16:38 bus) and very little chance of even catching that bus at all. Luckily there was another bus just over an hour later, which offered a Plan B, although it would get me home later than was ideal. Plan C, if I was getting too tired to make it all the way to Radewege, would be to land back at Ketzür and catch the bus there, making sure to decide in time to phone for the bus to be diverted for me - assuming that I could get a signal on my phone, and avoid dropping it in the lake!
I needn't have worried. With the wind at my back, I fairly flew back down the lake - not bothering with any more photos, though I did stop briefly to admire an osprey fishing - and made it to the beach at Radewege not merely in time for the "Plan A" bus, but in time for a Zander & chips late lunch / early supper at the lakeside restaurant (I asked them what was the quickest dish they could prepare!) And the journey home went perfectly, with no more public transport woes.
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