The Polish towns of Elblag and Ostroda would have very few chances to be considered among the most popular destinations by tourists who go to the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship if it were not for the artificial canal that connects them.

It would not be a great attraction, in fact, if it had not been realized in the mid-nineteenth century – and even this would be a rather unattractive feature – and especially if the difference in height between Lake Druzno and Lake Jeziorak did not exceed one hundred meters.

A prohibitive height, but not for the Prussian engineers who solved the problem in a very ingenious way, handing over their work to immortality, recognized by Unesco itself.

The trick was to combine the usual closed with an ingenious system of inclined planes and to impose on all the boats intending to furrow the waters of that channel dimensions such as to guarantee the transport by land with the maximum respect for safety: since the length of the watercourse that had the greatest difficulty in managing the height differences was too short to be able to realize an acceptable number of locks, it was decided to create five inclined planes on which to slide the boats on the ground using special wagons dragged on rails up to the level d upper or lower water.

In practice, the ships were loaded on a kind of funicular and dragged by land to the next stretch of water. Operations that still take place today, given that the mechanisms that regulate this smart handling system have remained in excellent condition.

The Elblag channel is actually no longer used for commercial purposes: only tourist boats remain on those waters, which can choose to tackle the entire cruise along the waterway, 80 kilometers in 11 hours of navigation, or if, on the other hand, you simply go along the sections affected by the most beautiful inclined planes.

Between 2011 and 2015 the work was entirely closed to the public due to the renovation of the machinery, but today it is one of the favorite attractions of those who visit Northern Poland.

A real investment, which makes that channel still productive, despite the transport of goods has long moved along other lines. The longest inclined plane (over 263 meters) is located in Jelenie, where it has to overcome a difference in height of 22 meters, a little higher than that of Olesnica, 262 meters long for an altitude difference identical to the previous one.

During the cruise, the attractions are not limited to observing the traction mechanisms of boats: the channel passes through first-rate natural scenarios, where you can admire some of the least contaminated stretches of the Warmian forest and where it is even possible to do birdwatching.

In fact, almost half of all Polish birds live in this area, which makes it particularly easy to spot storks, cormorants, ospreys, and, if you’re lucky, even the rare white-tailed eagle.

A cruise that, therefore, does not exhaust its charm in the middle, but it also associates with goals able to offer the visitor a respectable program.