Dawdling by the Danube by Edward Enfield

Author:Edward Enfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Summerdale
Published: 2011-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

THE DANUBE – 2006

I rode by the Danube from Passau to Vienna for no other reason than that I wanted to do it. I was not commissioned by The Mail on Sunday, although I put the idea to them, but they declined it. There was no camera crew in the offing, because I had long since been dropped by the BBC from its Holiday programme, for being too old.

Having just started, I will break off for a moment to say that in this they were, I think, in some sense wrong. They might well have been right to get rid of me, as someone they had had enough of. I have no great feelings about age discrimination, being well aware that we old people can be a frightful nuisance and often need to be pushed aside to make room for someone younger. This thinking, though, ought not to be applied to television programmes about people going on holiday because going on holiday is something old people do in enormous numbers. Although it is many years since I last appeared, I am still occasionally stopped by some elderly person who says, ‘I did like seeing you on the Holiday programme because if it was the sort of holiday that you seemed to enjoy, then it might be something that I might like as well.’ That seems reasonable, and when you consider that the whole of the immensely successful Saga organisation is founded on the idea of sending elderly people off on holiday, you might think that we ancients ought to figure largely on the screen, in place of young people roaring up and down swimming pools, which is what you usually see.

But I digress, though I do not repine. I was truly glad to be able just to make the trip for my own amusement, without having to write or do anything to please anyone else. My only difficulty was in finding out how to do it. Once this was solved, it was easy.

I was by now quite seriously old, or seventy-seven, to be precise. I had a sort of reluctance at this age to face the business of getting my bicycle to Heathrow, taking it partly to bits, putting it together at the other end and grappling with the minor damage which airlines habitually inflict upon bicycles given into their care. I imagined myself at railway stations searching for ticket offices, waiting for trains, missing connections and floundering about in the dark in the middle of an unhelpful population of whose language I spoke little. These were all things which at a mere sixty-five or even seventy I had taken in my stride but now I wondered if I should not find it all rather taxing. An easier way of doing things might be better, if I could find one.

My ride down the Romantische Strasse had been on offer to the world at large as a package, with flight, bicycle, route and accommodation all provided. Such an arrangement would suit me very well for the Danube ride provided I did not have to do it in company with other people.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.