Two authors combine their strengths in a travelogue, a search for roots, a romance - and a seat-of-your-pants adventure.
One sunny day in 2006, Julie and Colin Angus were talking about the future, as newly engaged couples do. More unusually, they were at the time travelling together from Moscow to Vancouver by human power - boat, bike, and foot.
That day, they were examining a road atlas and in particular the labyrinth of European inland waterways it revealed. Julie traced a route of interconnected canals, rivers, and coastlines that led from Colin's parents' homeland of Scotland past her mother's homeland, Germany, and on to her father's, Syria. She said, half-seriously: We could row (yes, row, as in propelling a tippy little boat on a pond) all the way from Scotland to Syria to visit our relatives. It was a reckless sort of joke to make, given the couple's addiction to adventure. The result is Rowed Trip, an odyssey by oar (and bike) from Caithness, Scotland, across the English Channel, through France, across the Rhine, the Main-Donau Canal to the Danube, the Black Sea, the Bosphorous Straits, and the Mediterranean. Julie and Colin each describe how the trip allowed them to test their relationship, to explore their roots, and to indulge to the max their shared taste for adventure. Map
1: THE RIGOURS AHEAD
SCOTLAND (Colin)
2: "YOU WON'T STAND A CHANCE IN THOSE BOATS"
ENGLAND (Julie)
3: THE TRAILER VANISHES
FRANCE (Colin)
4: MAINZ ATTRACTIONS
GERMANY (Julie)
5: IS IT A DOG? IS IT A BEAR?
AUSTRIA (Colin)
6: A PEST-INFESTED VESTIBULE
SLOVAKIA (Julie)
7: SEEING GOD
HUNGARY (Colin)
8: MINEFIELD
CROATIA (Julie)
9: NEW FAVOURITE COUNTRY
SERBIA (Colin)
10: BACK IN THE EU
BULGARIA (Julie)
11: CANAL OF DEATH
ROMANIA (Colin)
12: WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
BULGARIA AGAIN (Julie)
13: DANGEROUS BEAUTY
TURKEY (Colin)
14: JUST LIKE OUR FAMILY
SYRIA (Julie)
Appendices
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
The DVD Julie Angus (née Wafaei) has degrees in psychology, biology, and molecular biology. She has written for publications ranging from the National Post to enRoute and is the author of Rowboat in a Hurricane.
Colin Angus set off at nineteen on a five-year, mostly solo, sailing odyssey. Since then he has navigated some of the world's most challenging rivers. He has written for the Globe and Mail and Reader's Digest, and his books include Beyond the Horizon, Lost in Mongolia and Amazon Extreme.
Together, Colin and Julie were the first people to travel around the world on human power, a journey documented in Colin's Beyond the Horizon. Rowed Trip is their first joint venture as writers. 1
THE RIGOURS AHEAD
SCOTLAND (Colin)
My family tree is not lush and bountiful. Instead, its branches have been savagely pruned; sometimes entire limbs were sheared off by the Darwinian forces at play in Scotland's far north. Traditionally, whisky production and fishing were the main livelihoods, meaning that those who didn't succumb to the sea were liable to drink themselves to death. When I was a young boy, my mother would tell me stories about her homeland. My eyes opened wide as she regaled me with tales of hairy cows, vast moors of mist-drenched heather and men who wore skirts yet had the fortitude to stare down the Romans.
I was intrigued by this distant nation, awed by my mother's stories, and I knew that, through my heritage, I was indelibly connected to Scotland. Along with the tales of Robert Louis Stevenson told to me as I drifted to sleep, my mother's Scotland was filed in the part of my memory reserved for fiction, fantasy and folklore. And like the children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I felt I had a secret connection to another world. I was sure that one day I would make that journey.
That day arrived in early March 2008. My wife, Julie, and I slipped over the border from England in a rental Dodge Caravan with tw
