Friday 17^th July

As predicted, the weather had turned, massively for the better . It was a bright, warm sunny day – a summer morning in fact. We were due on board the 'Lisa of Lubeck' by 10:00, which meant being on the ferry by 09:30 and then a short walk to the boat. On the way, we passed a great dog water bowl (they are very common in the Baltic, they like their dogs hereabouts) (see photo to see if you agree).

The Lisa of Lübeck has an interesting history. She is a replica of the boats of the period, boats that made Lübeck very wealthy as they were state of the art machines of their time. What makes Lisa so special is that there are absolutely no designs in existence, so she has been built by being designed from scratch by a panel of experts, archaeologists, ships historians, naval architects and the like, with the basic form taken from the illustration on coinage of the time. She was built by volunteers, many of whom were unemployed and completed about 8 years ago. Today she is manned by volunteers and because of this, the daily hire fee was affordable for a group such as ours and thanks to Janet & Horst for coming up with the idea of using her to ferry us to Lübeck .

The river Trave is quite a wide river, more than capable of taking ships up to Lübeck. Indeed, I’ve not mentioned it yet I don’t believe, but we are passed by large container vessels, ferries and the like, at all hours of the day in our marina but the efficient design of modern hulls is such that they make very little wake, and any boat movement caused by their passing is barely perceptible. The other thing about the Trave is that for at least a part of the way to Lübeck, you are looking at what used to be GDR territory ie east Germany, quite a chilling thought. Now, where the border used to be, a 3 mile wide strip, it is a nature reserve all the way to the Alps, a superb resource for wildlife and an excellent corridor.

We arrived at Lübeck around lunch time, so we needed sustenance and the group split up, with strict instructions to meet at 14:15 at the church, to be ready to go into the Rathaus (town hall) where we were going to be officially welcomed by Senatorin Frau Annette Born . So, with a little time in hand and once sandwiched, we set off to do a little sightseeing. Our main goal was the Cathedral, a splendid structure that was badly damaged during the allied bombing but which has been faithfully rebuilt, using the original bricks and stones wherever possible, much like all of the old buildings hereabouts. I know I’ve said this in previous blogs but it was SUCH a good idea to do this, rather than let those idiotic so called architects that unfortunately we let loose in our cities, resulting in disasters such as Plymouth. Anyway, I believe I’ve put enough church photos into the blog so I am restricting myself to one, of fabulous carvings for sale, made from old timbers, pier piles etc and very simple but very subtle. I wonder if you agree. However, despite having ‘loadsa money’ in our account, we resisted temptation and left them there.

We were back in time for the Senatorin and what a superb, polished, beautifully crafted speech of welcome she made! We were universally impressed, as we were when Stuart Bradley responded – again, one could see why he was our President . One of the interesting features of the Rathaus is that it was also the courthouse in times gone by. There are two doors, high and low and felons found guilty had to exit via the short door, innocents could keep their heads high and use the high door!

We then had another hour or so before our next meeting, which was an early dinner in the restaurant we visited with Nick & Frankie Bown two years ago. It was originally the meeting house of Baltic Sea Captains and it is extremely quaint and interesting. The German name for the restaurant is the Schiffergesellschaft and I would commend it to anyone who has time for a meal in Lübeck. In order to cater for the sudden influx of >60 people and to keep the costs down, Janet had asked us to pre-order, from a menu which was wide enough to cater for all. We had plaice, wild boar and a haunch of bullock on our table, or at least bits of wild boar and bullock and this ample meal, washed down with Weissbier, made for a very pleasant evening.

We ended the day with the journey downriver in a more modern vessel, which of course has seating, so we were able to chat with our fellow CA members which passed the time very pleasantly and we were back on our boats by nine thirty, all quite tired after a very full day, an excellent first day of the Rally.