DOWN THE RHINE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 22, 21 October 1937, Page 8

DOWN THE RHINE

Wellington Man’s Holiday TRIP IN 'A CANOE One of the most popular forms of summer recreation in Europe is hiking, and though political troubles loom on every frontier, youth goes forth bravely in shorts and with a haversack to see things as they are. These young 1 people are aided by the Youth Hostel Movement, which provide shelter for a night and the use of the kitchen for 1/6. Then there are many thousands who combine hiking with canoeing. One of the latter last summer was Mr. George W. Lemmon, formerly of Brooklyn, Wellington, and now working in London, who spent his summer holiday tramping the highways of Switzerland and then floating down the Rhine from Mainz to Cologne, a distance of 160 miles, in a rubber collapsible canoe. “It is certainly a grand way of spending a holiday,” writes Mr. Lemmon. “The hire of the canoe at Mainz is at the rate of 5/- a day, but the sum of £2 is deposited, and away you go. At Cologne you pack the canoe up in two canvas bags, and put it on the rail addressed to its owner at Mainz. The river carries one along, with little exertion, at about five miles an hour. We are just passing the small village, Osterich, which boasts a church with a terrifically sharp steeple, and its little cluster of houses, while further on we will run into hilly country, where in the middle ages the German barons •built their schlosses. We stayed in one of these old castles for a night, the one at Wilheim, which has been turned into a youth hostel.” Before embarking on this adventure On the Rhine Mr. Lemmon had walked beside the Danube to its source in the Swiss Alps, to find, to his immense surprise, that the three great rivers, the . Rhine, the Rhone and the Danube had

their respective sources within a few miles of one another. Incidentally, he says that when the writing (in the letter) becomes very bad it should be understood that the canoe was in a jobble caused by the wash of a passing boat. On the trip down the Rhine he stayed one night at Bacharach, one at Coblenz, and one at Bonn. At Coblenz he stayed just out of the town at a canoeists’ youth hostel, where he was given a bed for a shilling and a breakfast for Bd., “not a New Zealand one, just coffee, rolls and marmalade (by which name they call all jam in Germany).

“The Germans certainly give the Jews a rough time,” wrote Mr. Lemmon. “We passed quite a few bathing places yesterday with the notice up; ‘No Jews may bathe here.’ The canoe stations along the Rhine are grand affairs. They have little landing stages and a paddock for the boats, a cafeteria if you don’t want to camp, and if you do you just pitch your tent in the back yard and buy what you want at the shop. I would prefer to camp if I went canoeing again, as there are some picturesque islands in the river on which one is allowed to pitch a tent. “We have some great fun trying to make the folk understand what we want, but after a lot of sparring we generally manage to make ourselves understood. Coming to a country like this and not knowing the language makes oue realise how patient and goodnatured some people are. In almost every conceivable spot here you .see the swastika sign, and every shop and home has a picture of Hitler.”