Schwanstetten

The lock system is an amazing piece of engineering. It consists of 16 rising locks from Budapest up to the European watershed, another 16 locks to cross the watershed and then 34 descending locks from the watershed down the Main river to the Rhine. The trip therefore traversing 66 locks in total. At its peak the elevation is 406 metres above sea level. On it’s inception it was clear that it was clearly only for freight and would never be used for passengers transportation, as obviously no sensible person would pay for such painfully slow mode of transportation. Then along cake tourism. The number of tourist river ships is mind boggling. Fortunately for us it’s off peak and the whole system shuts down each year two weeks after Christmas. Nearly all the vessels are docked and inactive so we have had the river pretty much to ourselves.Read more