Lahnau-Wincanton exchange week of May 2018
In the early morning of Saturday 26th May, the members of the German-English Friendship Association of Lahnau started towards their twin town, Wincanton, where they arrived in the early evening. There they met the three cyclists who started from Lahnau nine days earlier.
In the first days, Hans-Martin Brückmann, Frank Walther and Ulrich Hofmann covered each day a distance of at least 100 kilometers just by muscular strength on their bicycles. They cycled along the Lahn and the Rhine, crossed Belgium and a part of France until they took the ferry from Dunkirchen to Dover on Tuesday. After sunny days on the continent they were welcomed with rain in England.
The three cycled along the coast, stopped on historical ground in Hastings, occasionally discorded with the conditions of the weather and the streets, but made their way each day nearer to Wincanton. In the New Forrest they met wild horses and a school of Canadian geese. On rural streets they sometimes had to wait until a herd of sheep had passed by. In the end they succeeded with their intention to arrive in Wincanton some hours earlier than the other members of the association from Lahnau.
The first two days the visitors from Lahnau spent with their hosts. Some went to the Royal West and Bath Show, others made excursions to local mills, to Sherborne Castle or to busy London. In Sidbury the visitors enjoyed the open private gardens, others were surprised by the variety of the local artists, who opened their studios to the public for two weeks.
Very interesting and instructive was the excursion to the RNLI college in Poole, which was organised by the Wincanton-Lahnau Twinning Association. Here the visitors learned a lot about the training of the lifesavers, who are mostly volunteers. In a simulator they took part in a distress by sea at wind force 7 – more than one of the visitors became seasick just watching the simulated waves.
On Wednesdays the partners from Lahnau visited the Hill Brush Factory and on Thursday they went to Dorset to the Palmers Brewery. They learned how English beer is brewed, saw the machines, kettles and barrels, and – of course – tasted the products of the brewery at the end of the tour. In the afternoon they finished their excursion with a visit to West Bay with its impressive sandy cliffs.
During a common evening in the Wincanton Memorial Hall there was the opportunity to meet other hosts and visitors. Phil Rogers and Rudolf Tonigold, the chairmen of the associations, welcomed all visitors. 16-year-old Laura-Luise Schaub and Samantha-Josephine Buckley accompanied by Max Weber read in German and English the regards of Lahnau’s maior, Silvia Wrenger-Knispel, who didn’t accompany the group. Later, Frank Walther contributed to the evening some music with his bagpipe.
On the last day, the visitors from Lahnau took the opportunity to spend more time with their hosts on visits to Salisbury, Bath and Wells, and to see the wonderful view from the Glastonbury Tor and other things like that.
After an eventful week the 22 people from Lahnau started their journey home on Saturday at 5 o‘clock in the morning together with numerous presents and three bicycles in the trunk of the bus.
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Reply #1 on : Fri July 06, 2018, 16:15:13
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