The Paddler ezine Issue 49 Late Summer 2019 | Page 92

ThePADDLER 92 JOHN MACGREGOR Switzerland is hardly an unknown destination for canoeists, featuring as it does in the earliest tales of hardy kayak explorers. Scottish lawyer John MacGregor’s travels across Europe with his wooden boat in the late 1800s were famously recounted in his book ‘A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe’, surely one of the earliest travel books of its kind. It included detailed tales of adventures MacGregor had on the Reuss, the Lakes of Lucerne, Zug and Zurich, and the Rhine. Unmistakably Swiss architecture Were he to undertake his epic voyage again, there is much in Switzerland that MacGregor would still recognize today. His descriptions of the countryside will seem familiar now because in many rural parts of the countryside, little has changed. Superficially it has, there is more traffic and agriculture as described by McGregor is more mechanized these days. But farms are still small and the waters still run clear, while the Swiss remain curious, if still somewhat distant, when approached by a foreign paddler asking for help in broken German. Briton Dave Storey, head of recreational canoeing for the Swiss Canoe Federation (www.swisscanoe.ch), says that – as John MacGregor found more than 120 years ago – the country has a lot to offer the visiting paddler. “As a venue for paddling, it’s mind-blowing to come here. You can get very close to nature, enjoy lakes and rivers with all sorts of possibilities for every level of canoeist. There are many places you can only really reach by kayak and it’s good for the expert and the beginner alike.” HIGHTIDE KAYAK SCHOOL Lake Thun, part of the Jungfrau mountain range near Interlaken Ten years ago Storey set up Hightide Kayak School on Lake Brienz in the heart of the Bernese Oberland. Based near Interlaken (literally ‘between the lakes’), the company offers courses, tours, rentals and expeditions. The appeal of Lake Brienz is obvious at first glance – the waters have a strangely attractive turquoise hue due to the sediment washed into the lake by mountain waters from the Lütschine and the Aare rivers. At 260 metres at its deepest point, the lake is also one of the five deepest in Switzerland, and while a capsize will give paddlers a quick lesson in glacial water temperatures, the lake remains paddleable even in the depths of winter.