You never know who you’ll meet rafting down the river

IT WAS pleasant indeed to be rafting down the River Vltava in Bohemia in Czech Republic of a Sunday afternoon, so pleasant that some of us said that, one day, we’d paddle all the way to the Elbe and across Germany to the North Sea, writes Damien Enright

The day was perfect, sun on the river, the temperature about 22C; sometimes we paddled in sunlight, sometimes in the dappled light of the tall willows that overhung the water on both banks for kilometres at a time.

We were four rafts full of Enrights and Enright in-laws come together from Ireland, Britain, Spain, Canada and Czech Republic for our annual family reunion. This year, it was in the town of Ceske Budejovice in Bohemia at the home of a son, and at his old barn in the fields outside town. Last year, it was Manchester, the year before west Cork, and so on.