Rotarian Ken Fraser

Report of Rotary Club of Leven Meeting, Tuesday 23rd of August 2016.

The speaker for the evening was Rotarian Ken Fraser, who gave an interesting talk about his recent holiday on a Rhine River Cruise.

The trip began with a flight from Edinburgh to Basel where Ken and his wife Ena embarked on the MS Jane Austen, a five star vessel which was built in 2015, with a restaurant and lounge with panoramic views, and all amenities including a spa, sun deck and even a putting green on board. As there are many locks on the river Rhine, all riverboats are constructed to be 11.5 m wide, this being the maximum width that can be contained in a lock.

The first stop on the trip was to Lucerne, and Here Ken showed wonderful photographs of the quintessential Chapel Bridge, as well as truly breathtaking images from the top of the mountain railway.

The next day it was a Black Forest coach tour and a visit to the town of Titisee.

This was followed by Strasbourg and visit to the Cathedral.

By now the boat had progressed into the Rhine Gorge, with its soaring rocky outcrops and many ruined castles, the famous Loreley rock is also here, where legend has it that beautiful nymphs used to lure sailors to their deaths.

Next came Koblenz and the ruined bridge at Remagen, which was captured intact by the allies towards the end of WW2 only to collapse later after thousands of American troops, had crossed over it.

As the boat progressed down river and got nearer to the more industrial areas, it was plain to see from Ken’s photographs that the amount of traffic on the river also increased with all sorts of boats, cruise ships, barges, pleasure craft etc, some of the larger vessels had cars and boats on their decks, Ken explained that many people didn’t own houses but lived on the boats, and they had small crane hoists which allowed them to transfer their car on to the quay when putting in to port, so they could have the use of it. In common with other countries, much of the dockside areas had been developed with many very expensive waterfront apartments in evidence.

The boat finally docked at Cologne, eight days and some 100 miles later.

Rotarian Ian Forgan thanked Ken for a very interesting talk, and also complimented him on his photographic skills.