Slow Boats to Europe

Trevor Cherrett

Description

An epic River Journey from the English Channel to the Black Sea. Ten European countries crossed by boats, bicycles and the occasional train. An evocative description of Europe at a time of great economic, social and political change. They had been dreaming about it for years - to cross Europe by river from the English Channel to the Black Sea, a 3500km navigation via the rivers Rhine, Main and Danube. The original idea was to go in their own boat, but when this proved too difficult, Trev and Pete decided to wing it - by hired motor cruiser, passenger ferries, bicycles, the odd train journey, and for the final leg of the journey, a Saga Cruise! This is the story of their journey, completed in five stages over three years. They were accompanied by various friends and relations at different times - a kind of 'gap year' adventure for baby boomers. Like any big trip the story is a personal odyssey ; but it is also what Thomas Hardy called a `series of seemings`: a collection of unique vignettes, describing a river journey into the heart of Europe at a time of great economic and political uncertainty. In the background the shadow of Brexit hangs over this undertaking, and now has given it an even greater relevance. This book will appeal to lovers of rivers, boats, and journeys, and anyone interested in England`s wider connections with the rest of Europe.

Sujets

• Expeditions
• Travel writing

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788030762
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

They had been dreaming about it for years. To cross Europe by river from the English Channel to the Black Sea, a 3500km navigation through ten countries via the rivers Rhine, Main and Danube. The original idea was to go in their own boat, but when this proved too difficult, Trev and Pete decided to wing it - by hired motor cruiser, passenger ferries, bicycles, the odd train, an eco-tour. and for the final leg of the journey. a Saga Cruise.
This is the story of their journey, completed in five stages over three years. They were accompanied by various friends and relations at different times - a kind of gap year adventure for baby-boomers. Like any big trip the story is a personal odyssey; but it is also a collection of unique vignettes, describing a river journey into the heart of Europe at a time of great economic and political uncertainty.
This book will appeal to lovers of rivers, boats and journeys and anyone interested in England s wider connection with the rest of Europe.
SLOW BOATS
TO EUROPE
SLOW BOATS
TO EUROPE
A River Journey from the English Channel
to the Black Sea
Trevor Cherrett
Copyright © 2017 Trevor Cherrett
Originally Published in May 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador
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ISBN 978 1788030 762
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
This book is dedicated to the author Jonathan Raban, whose books inspired me to write about river and sea passages; and to Pete, who shared the dream and the journey.
CONTENTS
Maps, Photographs and Sketches
About the Author
Acknowledgements
A Post-Brexit Preface
Chapter 1: Under Way
Chapter 2: Holland (where the lock-keepers don’t speak English)
Chapter 3: Into the Rhine Valley (where tourism is taken seriously)
Chapter 4: Up the Main (in padded pants)
Chapter 5: Crossing the Watershed: From the Rhine and Main to the Danube
Chapter 6: MittelEurope: the halfway house
Chapter 7: The Endless River
Chapter 8: The Delta
Chapter 9: The Black Sea
Chapter 10: Passage Reflections
Annex Passage Notes
MAPS, PHOTOGRAPHS AND SKETCHES
MAPS
Our Route Across Europe – via the Rivers Rhine, Main, and Danube; from the North Sea to the Black Sea, all rights reserved Schöning GmbH & Co. KG, Lübeck
The Dutch Waterways; from B Navin, Cruising Guide to the Netherlands , Imray, 2010
The Rhine Valley; from the Manual on Danube Navigation ; via donau, 2013
Our route up the Main Valley – By bike and by boat
Waterways of the Danube region; from the Manual on Danube Navigation ; via donau, 2013
Three mouths of the Delta; from the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Eco-Touristic Map
The European inland waterways Rhine and Danube compared; from the Manual on Danube Navigation ; via donau, 2013
Infrastructure bottlenecks in the Danube river waterways; from the Manual on Danube Navigation ; via donau, 2013
PHOTOGRAPHS
All photos are by the author (TC) except where indicated for Graham Tazzyman (GT), Conrad Plowman (CP) and Carolyn Luff (CL)
SKETCHES
Sketches and cartoons are by Liz Dotesio, Jo Rose and Frank Milner as indicated
About the Author
Trevor Cherrett is a semi-retired rural community planner with a lifelong passion for messing about in boats. He spent 30 years navigating the rivers and canals of England in a converted 20ft clinker motor boat named Morgan, and is now exploring the coastal harbours, estuaries and rivers of Britain in a 22ft traditional new-build wooden harbour launch named Morgana , and a 15ft rowing boat called Shelagh .
He writes regularly for several boating and fishing magazines.
[e-mail]
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to many friends, crew, and countless people we met along the 3500km of the rivers crossing Europe, for all their help and support: special thanks go to Conrad Plowman and Graham Tazzyman for their photos in the Danube Delta, and Frank Milner for the cartoon.
I am very grateful to Liz Dotesio and Jo Rose for their delightful sketches, Sarah Dotesio for the painstaking work of design and layout, and Alison Maddock for all her help with proof-reading.
I would also like to thank David Oldman, Malcolm Moseley, Steve Cropley and David Bucknell very much for their generous help and encouragement, along with writers Hugh Thomson and Sara Wheeler for their guidence on an excellent Arvon writing course (along with fellow aspirant writers).
But in the end of course I take full responsibility for any shortcomings and errors in the final text.

Source: Brochure From the North Sea to the Black Sea , Schöning GmbH & Co. KG, Lübeck.
Our Route Across Europe 2012-2014 - via the Rivers Rhine, Main, and Danube
A POST-BREXIT PREFACE
All journeys leave impressions, even if “the reality of travel is not what we anticipate”, as Alain de Botton muses in The Art of Travel. One of the most lasting impressions I gained on our 3500km journey from the English Channel to the Black Sea was the sheer physical existence of this continuous inland waterway navigation along the rivers Rhine and Main and Danube, across ten nations from one end of Europe to the other; and of course its huge potential for all kinds of linkages and interactions, from trade and commerce to tourism, culture and the environment.
Much of this potential is being realised – witness the plethora of River Cruises offering such journeys as the Splendours of the Danube or The Jewels of Central Europe . And much of it is also being enhanced by the efforts of the European Union as part of a Trans-European Transport Network, through joint partnerships and projects undertaken by countries wishing to improve navigation and transport facilities, along with the environment of the rivers and their valleys . We saw remarkable evidence of such improvements in the cleaning up of the lower Danube and the Delta, which suffered so appallingly from the pollution of the Communist era, (and of course the human misery resulting from projects built by forced labour, such as the Black Sea-Danube Canal).
This is not to say that this potential is easily realised. There are serious blockages to navigation on the Danube, such as severe flooding ( which postponed a stage of our journey) or more often the opposite problem of drought and low water. Much investment is needed in docking and transhipment facilities. Environmentally sensitive areas need special protection. And it is also true that differences in national and cultural perceptions run deep. Quoting from a Hungarian guide book in 1923, the Chicago Daily News`s roving correspondent Negley Farson notes that:
“Below Budapest the Danube traverses the vast Hungarian plain. Scenery monotonous, banks thinly populated, towns insignificant.”
Nearly a century later, we got a similar reaction in Budapest when trying to organise a boat journey downriver. Shrugs of the shoulders , grimacing faces. Southwards to Serbia was beyond the pale.
The history goes even deeper. Catastrophic defeat by the Turks at Mohacs on what is now the Hungarian – Serbian border. The collapse of the Austro- Hungarian Empire after the 1st World War. Destruction and displacement of populations in and after the Second. Communist domination in the Cold War. And even since then the Danube has suffered the savagery and destruction of the Serbian and Croat `Homeland` wars of the 1990s. It is a history of severe conflict.
Yet now we travelled under re-built bridges and visited reconstructed towns. The river is clean and the banks are at peace (except perhaps for the occasional unexploded bomb). The via donau has been established as a waterway management company in order to:-
“Develop new logistical concepts and innovative technological solutions that facilitate the environmentally –friendly use of the Danube as a waterway route, with the aim of strengthening the commercial relevance of the Danube waterway in an enlarged Europe.”
It is all joined up again.
Or is it ? In the few years since we set out from the canals of Amsterdam the world` s political landscape has changed utterly. By the Brexit vote we have turned our back on not only the economic union of Europe – plagued as it undoubtedly is by the flawed venture of the Euro – but also its political cohesion, its ability to create solid alliances, the kind of alliances that have prevented Europe repeating its ghastly experience of two world wars; and to work in partnership for the wider good, whether that is building a great waterway trade route from the eastern Mediterranean to the North Sea, cleaning up the environment or enriching our opportunities for investment and employment. Meanwhile the alienated reaction to mainstream politics has boosted the popularity of right-wing nationalist movements intent on building barriers around borders and keeping `others` out, not just in Trump`s America but also in many of the countries whose people and waterways we delighted in experiencing, from the benign bicycles and barges of the Dutch canals to the booming city tourism of Budapest and the leisurely backwater habitats of the Danube delta.
So yet again the outlook looks bleak. There is a real danger that the EU will falter