In 1932, having trained in kayaking, Meyer kayaked from Bavaria, via the
Main and
Rhine, the
North Sea's coastline,
Belgium,
Calais, the
English Channel and
River Thames to
Westminster, London. She had come as a student, to learn English. By the time she was making a second attempt at circumnavigating Britain, she had already clocked up of canoeing, and newspapers were reporting that she was a long-distance sea-kayaking record-holder for women. Nolan was an experienced canoeist, having used an open canoe on the
Mississippi River in 1928, from Canada to
Winona. However, he chose a single folding kayak, also known as a
folbot or
folboat, for the UK circumnavigation; and it was a craft with which he had had little experience. On 2 June 1933, the day before he planned to set off, Meyer published in The
Daily Express that she would attempt to break the record for Germany. She had been in training, but she too was unfamiliar with the folding kayak; she had so far owned one for a single day. She was only 24 years old, she said, and tall. By 1934 her flag had been stolen seven times. Unladen, the kayak weighed around . She used an
paddle, and carried two
compasses. Nolan published his diary of his record attempt in
The Wide World in 1934. "a big crowd gave a rousing send off". Meyer and Nolan had their photographs taken, Nolan started off in his canoe, then Meyer "cheekily" waited for half an hour to give him a "head start", A brief film was made of Meyer's start along the river, with her dog in the kayak.
The Northern Whig stated that Meyer's "only provision [was] a supply of milk chocolate" and that the estimate for the duration of the circumnavigation at that point was "over four months". On 21 June while she was paddling from
Southwold to
Lowestoft, "a gale was blowing with a heavy sea". Meyer's husband Engert attempted to join her at sea, but capsized. His canoe was "stove in and submerged", who carried him lying across the bows of her canoe, while the dog swam in a lifebelt for 45 minutes. By the time Engert was picked up by the Lowestoft
coast guard, he was "in a state of collapse [and] hanging on to the outside [of Meyer's canoe]". Later, the Lowestoft crew and launchers of the lifeboat
Agnes Cross were rewarded with a sum of money for the rescue, by the
RNLI. The
Daily Mirror gave a slightly different version of the story:Engert's identity as Meyer's husband was hidden in reports of this incident, due to Meyer's wish to use her maiden name. By the time she reached
Mundesley, after , Meyer was "exhausted" by the North Sea wind, tide and surf, and lost several days by stopping to rest. On 10 July she reached
Mablethorpe. She left Mablethorpe for
Saltfleet on 11 July, watched by "hundreds of spectators". At Mundesley, Nolan had overtaken Meyer, having done and reached
Hunstanton. However he paddled to
Kings Lynn instead of crossing
The Wash, he was held up by publicity events in that town, and by the time he was ready to proceed he was overpowered by "bad weather. and rough seas", and was rescued by a fishing boat while being overtaken by Meyer. Nolan tried to catch up, but reached
Cleethorpes and took three days to repair his boat and rest, before rounding
Spurn Head. accepted a pleasure flight from local pilots, crash landed into a hedge, suffered
concussion, and was still continuing the race. The injury caused by the accident delayed the next stage of Mayer's journey, which would take her to
Bridlington. At Bridlington, "still suffering from slight concussion" from the plane crash, Meyer said that she was "120 miles ahead" of Nolan. She changed into "a long dress of red silk, a beret, and sandals", and "had difficulty forcing her way through [the crowd which met her] to the Harbour Master's office". The crowd then waited for two hours until she came out. She was welcomed formally by town representatives, then was joined by eleven wealthy German tourists, young men who entertained the crowd in their national costume, waving flags and singing. On 9 August, Meyer left
Sunderland for
South Shields. At that point she was averaging per day at sea. On the night of 19 August, between
Holy Island and
Berwick-upon-Tweed, "she was forced ashore on three occasions and compelled twice to jump into the water". Arriving at
Goswick, she relaunched her canoe "with difficulty" paddled to
Scremerston, and thence to Berwick. In spite of a westerly wind and a strong ebb, she landed at
North Berwick on 1 September, to be met by "large crowds", then she continued to
Leith, via
Edinburgh. She crossed the
Firth of Forth to
Burntisland in one and a half hours, then carried on to
Kirkcaldy, which she reached ahead of her own schedule. On 6 September, she was greeted by a large crowd and Provost Kilgour at Kirkcaldy, and the next day, Meyer left Kirkcaldy for the paddle to Methil. which she reached on 9 September. Nolan had beat Meyer to Anstruther (the point) by fifteen minutes, by daringly crossing the open water of the
Firth of Forth during a good-weather window. She convalesced in North Yorkshire afterwards.
Meyer's attempt to continue the UK circumnavigation, 1934 On 8 June 1934, Meyer left London in what has been described as a second attempt to circumnavigate the UK in a canoe, this time going clockwise. From the Thames she would go south around the
Kent coast, then west via the
English Channel. Whether or not in consequence of a possible scandal, there was little Press coverage of Meyer's 1934 attempt, although it is known that her husband Engert organised events along the way as before, and Wuffles accompanied Meyer. To reach
Southsea she had first to shelter from bad weather at
Emsworth, then she had to make it to
Southsea's South Parade Pier in spite of tides and currents which forced a route passing close to the
Isle of Wight. At Southsea a crowd of holiday-makers gave her an "enthusiastic" reception. When she left Southsea, a rival for the circumnavigation title,
Croydon schoolmaster Ronald Cameron Bowie, left at the same time, and it was suggested that this was now a race. "Her tiny craft was nearly sunk in a squall between Southsea and
Netley". Meyer reached
Weymouth in September, but rested before rounding
Portland Bill. (She had bought the horse-drawn caravan in Canterbury in July 1934). "Somewhere between
Land's End and the
Bristol Channel", Meyer gave up the project and went home. During the 1933 event, coastguards were keeping "a close lookout" for her, "[using] flags to indicate possible landing places if necessary". One offshoot of the race, and of other later events like it, was publicity for the folding kayak. In 1936, Meyer was invited to
Wembley Pool to present a long-distance canoeing trophy to Frank M. Whittingham, who had "[crossed] the Channel and back in a folding canoe in the record time of thirteen hours, thirty-five minutes. By that year, canoeing was becoming popular, and folding canoes had become "common on the Thames", keeping a "small London factory continually busy".
Myth Beside the fiction maintained by the Press in 1933 that the kayaker Meyer was a young, unmarried woman, another myth grew in later years that she had completed the circumnavigation of the United Kingdom. That story appeared in 1982, when the
Harrogate Advertiser published her obituary under her married name of Fridel Dalling-Hay. Not long after that, her obituary was published in her German birth town of Kitzingen, repeating the same story. The
Times journalist
Simon Barnes was caught up in the fiction in 1983, writing that Meyer was "the first person to achieve this feat [of circumnavigating Britain by canoe]". For some years, that myth was repeated as fact, in the American magazine
Sea Kayaker. The matter was investigated, and the true story was published in a 1989 article in the
Sea Kayaker by Alan Byde. The Dalling-Hay family provided evidence of the true story to the Stadtarchiv in Kitzingen, and Thomas Theisinger again confirmed the truth in 2010. However those publications of the true facts were not seen by all, and the myth persisted such that Harrogate historian
Malcolm Neesam wrote in 2019 that Meyer had got to know her new country in 1933 "by undertaking a solo 2,500 mile circumnavigation of the island of Britain by kayak". It was repeated again in 2021 by journalist Thomas Barrett in the Harrogate news service,
Stray Ferret: "Fridel Dalling-Hay ... became the first person in the world to circumnavigate the island of Britain in a canoe". One possible reason for the growth and persistence of this myth is that, following her second marriage, Dalling-Hay did not like to discuss her early days - which included political imprisonment - and assumptions were made. ==Return to private life==