Thursday, 29 June 2017

Boat on a Rope




And then there was the Rhine. My childhood memories of the Canadian River in downtown Oklahoma City is of looking down at a wide muddy place with a few puddles. 







That's all changed now, with a canal and some great restaurants, into a thriving commercial district but the point is, big rivers with lots of water really impress me.

The Rhine meets my definition of 'big' and then some.




So having found the loo we found ourselves beside the Rhine where we discovered a couple of small boat docks and what I call a Boat-on-a-Rope. 








This told us just how strong the current on the Rhine was. Basically there was a very large cable was strung across the river and another cable or rope connected a boat to the cable. Simply by directing with the rudder the boat could cross back and forth between the docks on each side, using only the current for power.



The docks themselves were simple little places, but they generally seemed to have been made quite home-like in ways that always appealed to me. 







Very clever stuff. And it cost something like 50-60 cents. Not everything in Switzerland is terribly expensive!

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