Szczecin from the water

Taking a river cruise around sunset gives new perspectives on a maritime or riverine city, often yielding magnificent prospects not to be experienced on foot. Szczecin is no exception.

Below: pulling away by boat from the centre of Szczecin, beyond the far end of the Bulwar Chrobrego.

Below: flashback to the Royal Docks on the Thames in the early 1980s before they were redeveloped. The entrances to Basen Wschodni and Basen Zachodni, the East and West Basens of Szczecin docks.

Below: floating dry-dock in Szczeciń's Stocznia Remontowa (repair shipyard), currently servicing the Sea La Belle, a Liberian-registered chemical tanker used for carrying epoxy resins (!). It has been here for just over a week.

Below: Is this Cookham Dene? Are we on the upper reaches of the Thames? No, this is about five minutes' north by boat from central Szczecin. And soon it will be autumn in Buckinghamshire. 

Left: looking back towards the Szczecin shipyards. The city offers the joys of boating to its citizens, who have safe inland waters close to hand. The season is over, but it's still warm enough until the sun goes down. 

Below: the wreck of the Ulrich Finsterwalder, a small concrete-hulled (yes!) transport ship built by the Germans in 1942. A circumnavigation of ts 90m-long hull marked the end point of the cruise; having rounded the Eisenbeton-Seefrachter, our boat began to head back for Szczecin. At this point, we are still over 55km from the sea – so much for Churchill's "From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain is descending across our Continent." But then I doubt he could have mastered the pronunciation of 'Świnoujście on the Baltic'.

Below: last rays of the sun, setting over Szczecin's north-western suburbs, the telephoto zoom shot...

...and the wide angle shot. Sunset is 25 minutes later here than in Chynów, due to Szczecin's location on Poland's extreme west.

Below: return to Szczecin's port, passing the shipyards on the left bank of the Oder. Marvellous mood. Puts me in mind of Joseph Conrad's description of the Thames Estuary at the beginning of Heart of Darkness or Erskine Childer's descrption of the approaches to the Kiel Canal in Riddle of the Sands.

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