Fridel Meyer

Fridel Meyer

Meyer in 1933
Personal information
Full name	Fridel Engert Fridel Halling-Day
Citizenship	British
Born	(1904-02-04)4 February 1904 Kitzingen, Bavaria, German Empire
Died	17 December 1982(1982-12-17) (aged 78) Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England
Resting place	Grove Road Cemetery, Harrogate
Occupations	Car mechanic shop owner
Sport
Country	Germany
Sport	Kayaking
Long-distance kayaking	River Main, Bavaria, to Westminster, 1932 British coast, 1933 and 1934

Fridel Meyer (4 February 1904 – 17 December 1982) was a German kayaker who was born in Kitzingen, Bavaria. She publicly retained her maiden name for kayaking events after marrying Edward Engert, but later used the name Fridel Dalling-Hay after marrying a second time. She made two failed attempts at the circumnavigation of the United Kingdom, but clocked up an informal 1933 women's record for long-distance sea-kayaking after paddling to Montrose from Westminster.

Meyer's first anticlockwise circumnavigation attempt in 1933 ended with a car accident and injury near Montrose, and the second clockwise attempt in 1934 was curtailed by bad weather in the English Channel. However, after she died a myth arose that she had been the first to complete a circumnavigation of the UK. That myth was corrected in 1989, but nevertheless it persisted in the media for some decades after that.

Following the circumnavigation attempts, Meyer was imprisoned as an alien during the Second World War under Defence Regulation 18B, and held in Holloway Prison for around six months until she was released under the evidence of barrister Norman Birkett. She gave up canoeing events, and lived for most of the rest of her life in Harrogate, West Riding of Yorkshire, where she and her second husband Glen Dalling-Hay renovated the former Empire Theatre and ran a pram shop.