Belgium, Beer and Beethoven

Belgium, Beer and Beethoven
A Traveller's Tale #29
The Cape family, travelling through France, had crossed the border into Germany on a quick 10-day final sprint before voyaging back to New Zealand. Having trained with the BBC in London and toured the British Isles in pursuit of artisans and heritage, my father, Peter Cape, with his wife Barbara and children, Stephanie and Christopher in tow, were visiting Europe. We had left Heidelberg and Oppenheim and were now in the Rhine Valley where my father's diary again leads the narrative.

November 7, 1962, Wednesday
Mainz – Bonn
Up – stop in Rhine mist. Buy Kit Mecki, and change cheque (what a rigmarole) at a savings bank (it opened at 9am). Mist annoying, but clears slowly. Enter Rhine Valley and lunch – bottle of wine and bread as usual – then on to Lorelei Rock, scenic Schlosses (Castles), the lot.
Missed mentioning Mainz where we saw wonderful cathedral and Kit lost his 3.50 deutschmark Mecki. Bought him another, bad temperedly, then on through the Rhine vineyards. Reached Bonn late and couldn't find a Gasthaus. Drove out and camped in a park platz – I pitched tent and slept in it. Barbara and children in car.

November 8, 1962, Thursday

Bonn - Aachen (with Cologne) briefly Belgium.

Back to Bonn – shopped (Barbara a hardback, Kit some trousers) had soup in large store – enormous helping for 50 pfennigs. Saw fireman taking beer stein off Beethoven statue. Drove hard to Cologne and find cathedral. Bought Lederhosen. (Would have liked a leder jacket). Away and head for Belgium border. Have puncture on autobahn (large hole in tyre). Truck driver shifts wheel (nuts too tight for me). Into Aachen where three shop assistants and two students help us to shop for tinned dinner. At border, go to wrong place for change and are shortchanged by about 20 deutschmarks. This I discover while cooking meal. Go back and tell dreadful woman who did it in a border café with a bureau de change attached. Argue about an hour and make it plain I'm not leaving until I've got my 20 deutschmarks. Barbara tries to get help from listener. At end, woman gives in. On into Belgium in dark. At midnight, find generator not charging. Drive through Bruxelles, and on til three, when battery begins to fail. Can't find a hill to stop on, but outside Ghent there is an all-night garage. Bloke, in French, says we can park there, sleep in car, and have battery changed in morning. This we do.

A ladder is prepared to remove a beer stein from a statue of Beethoven in Bonn, Germany 1962. Photo / Peter Cape

November 9, 1962, Friday

Oostende - home

Go into Ghent (photograph plaza and house with thatch) buy last continental bread, eat it, and drive to Oostende. Shop around – see and photograph lobster fishermen. Car starts – get it aboard ferry (expecting to be pushed off) and return to England. At Dover car just gets going. Go to all-night garage (NB: French customs much quicker than bloody English) who replace generator brush for 10 shillings. Drive home wearily. Keeping to the left.

We'd arrived home in Stoke Newington. We had driven 5000 – 6000 miles (8000 – 9000 kms). Our 1948 Ford Anglia had served us well and would be adopted by new owners within the week. We had just six days to prepare for our sea passage to New Zealand. The month-long voyage would perhaps be something of an oasis.

ITINERARY.
London – Aylesbury – High Wycombe – Reading – Winchester – Ramsbury-Salisbury – Wilton - Cerne Abbas – Crewkerne – Honiton – Exeter – Bovey Tracey –Dartmoor – Plymouth – Fowey – Lostwithiel – Truro – Marazion – Penzance – Mousehole – Land's End - St Ives – Zennor – Wadebridge – St Neots – Tintagel – Boscastle – Barnstaple –Dunster – Taunton – Bridgewayer – Somerton – Bath –Bristol Yeovil – Shepton - Mallet – Dursley – Stroud – Glouster – Cheltenham –Winchcombe Broadway – Worcester – Droitwich – Stourbridge – Hereford – Ross-on Wye Monmouth – Tintern – Caerleon – Cardiff – Llandaff – Caerphilly –Merthyr Tydfil – Neath – Llanelly – Kidwelly –Llandilo – Carreg Cennan -Carmarthen – Pembroke – St Davids – Fishguard – Llandyssul - Tregaron –Aberystwyth – Machyalleth Dolgelly - Barmouth – Harlech – Beddgelart – Gaernarvon – Holyhead – Betws-y-Coed – Corwer - Chester – Manchester – Bolton – Grange-over-Sands – Windermere – Coniston – Ravenglass – Eskdale – Keswick Ambleside – Kendal – Penrith – Barnard Castle – Whitby – Durham - Newcastle on Tyne – Gateshead – Berwick on Tweed – Flodden Field – Duns – Selkirk – Peebles – Edinburgh – Stirling – Perth – Blairgowrie – Braemar – Ballater – Balmoral – Tomintoul – Boat of Garten - Culloden – Inverness – Dingwell – Brora – Wick – John O Groats – Thurso – Tongue – Liarg – Ullapool – Aultbea – Loch Ewe – Achnasheen – Skye – Ardvasar – Portree – Dunvegan – Glen Moristoun – Inverness – Fort William – Glen Coe – Oban – Loch Etive – Loch Awe -Loch Lomond – Glasgow – Edinburgh –Howick – Gretna – Carlisle – Durham – York – London.
Also day trips to St Alban's, Berkhamsted, Whipsnade, Windsor, Oxford, Cambridge, Stratford, Brighton.

We travelled to Boulogne, and spent 10 days on a rapid tour of northern France, Western Germany, and Belgium, travelling to Paris, and thence to Strassbourg, the Schwartzwald, Heidelberg, Mainz, up the Rhine to Bonn and Cologne, and then by Bruxelles to Ostende and Dover. Six days later we would board the MS Oranje for our voyage to New Zealand.
My father, being a writer, noted some observations for his report to the Imperial Relations Trust, from whom he had won a grant for the trip.

Accidents – but the family of God has been at worship
They of set heritage in NZ
Change from chat to lecture.
The Wobbly Isles and The Wobbling Market
More English than the English
Speech, education, caste, authority, "my job", queues, myth, anger.
Small rebellions – footpaths etc. dogs.
Love of justice and fair play: fooey
Five generations apart – not merely transplanted English
Sarcasm and the English sniff

We had arrived in Southampton in April in the midst of a blackthorne spring. Our stay in the British Isles had lasted six and a half months. We departed England from Southampton on board the MS Oranje on November 16, 1962. The NZBC had insisted on our return passage being through Panama rather than Suez as we had originally planned. Evidently, the NZBC had invested a large amount in my father's work and they didn't want to lose their leverage. After all, tensions were still present in the Middle East after the Suez Crisis. Egypt had blockaded the Suez Canal with scuttled shipping. The yellow fleet had been marooned there for years. So, unexciting as it was, we were aboard the same ship we arrived on, retracing our steps to New Zealand. The cold war was not over.

Nuclear war had been averted barely three weeks before we left England when the Soviet submarine B-59 had held back on launching a nuclear torpedo at US navy vessels in the waters off Cuba. We were also fortunate to leave when we did. England was heading for its coldest winter since 1895. They would call it the Big Freeze of 1963. The only recorded winters colder were those of 1684/85 and 1739/40. London was also heading for its last and worst smog pollution in December 1962. The major smog event 10 years earlier, in December 1952, had killed dozens. Leaving Southampton my father photographed the ocean liner, Queen Elizabeth getting up steam. By the time we reached Panama the bridge that resembled the Auckland Harbour Bridge and was under construction eight months earlier, was now complete. We sailed on, visiting Tahiti again before making landfall in Wellington.