UNFREQUENTED PATHS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19997, 14 January 1927, Page 10

UNFREQUENTED PATHS.

TOUR. THROUGH EUROPE. THE CHARM OF OLD CITIES. BANK MANAGER’S IMPRESSIONS. (Special to Daily Times.) WELLINGTON. January 13. The impressions of Mr E. P. Yaldwyn. Now Zealand manager of the Commercial j Bank of Australia, who has recently returned from an c tended trip abroad, are j of more interest than those of the average tourist who follows a well-worn route round Europe. Mr Yaldwyn, with his wife and son, travelled over the highways and byways of the old world by motor car, completing a journey of 12,000 miles. The particular beauties of Scotland, Wales, and the lakes district of northern England all appealed to him, but he thought that greater and more varied heights of scenic grandeur were to be I found in this Dominion. In search of un--1 spoiled localities he traversed the borders of Spain, zig-zagging along the heights of the rugged Pyrene s and into the Basque ' country. The route taken was through j Switzerland and Italy over the Fre. h | I Alps, through eastern France, Luxembourg , and Belgium. Mr Yaldwyn mentioned, in | I particular, Genev. where the Peace Con- 1 ference was sitting the picturesque towns of Italy, Digue, immortalised by Victor Hugo in “Les Miserables,” and Luxembourg, a very quaint old city, which seemed to be left unnoticed by most European travellers. In Behgum the held of Waterloo was vis.ted, and he went on through Bruges a-.d Ghent to Ostend. Having done most of his travelling by oar, Mr Yaldwyn was asked how the. various countries compared in motor traffic and catering facilities. In England, he said, there were more cars than on the Uon- . tinent, but he thought the latter was more ’ up to date in many ways. The roads in j Britain were excellent, and he found it hard to recall right from Land’s End to John o , Groats what in New Zealand would be , termed a bad road. In France also the roads were good, but they were much rougher in Italy. They wore also very | dusty there, and motorists travelled at a j high speed, so that to get comfort one had j to keep in front. A notable feature was j the noise made by every car. Italian motorists seemed to compete in the number ol horns they carried, and used coost fctiectively. In the cities this created a fearful din joined as it was to the noise of tramcars and barrel organs, which commenced about 5 o’clock every morning. Economically, said Mr Yaldwyn, the Continental countries which he visited seemed better off than Britain In France a official figures showed only a few hundreds of unemployed, whereas in the United Kingdom the authorities were still with a number approaching 2,000,000. H0t..1 accommodation, allowing for currency values, was considerably cheaper on the Continent Articles of clothing were also cheaper, and taxation was on a lower scale. , In Britain many modern conveniences , noticeable in Australia and New Zealana j were conspicuous by their absence. He noticed a number of lamplighters m Regon Park, where, apparently, one man could have done the job. Many other oldfashioned methods were sec-i Hut. at the same time,” he said, these, to some extent, constitute the charm which is the heritage of the Old Country.