Narrow Dog To Carcassonne by Terry Darlington (English) Paperback Book

$25.66 Buy It Now, FREE Shipping, 30-Day Returns, eBay Money Back Guarantee
Seller: the_nile ✉️ (1,207,744) 98.3%, Location: Melbourne, AU, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 134693581665 Narrow Dog To Carcassonne by Terry Darlington (English) Paperback Book. Narrow Dog To Carcassonne. On the Phyllis May you dive through six-foot waves in the Channel, are swept down the terrible Rhne, and fight for your life in a storm among the flamingos of the Camargue. The Nile on eBay  

Narrow Dog To Carcassonne

by Terry Darlington

When they retired, Terry and Monica Darlington decided to sail their canal narrow boat across the Channel and down to the Mediterranean, together with their whippet Jim. They took advice from experts, who said they would die, together with their whippet Jim. Aliens, vandals, and the walking dead all stand between three innocents and their goal.

FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New

Publisher Description

The hilarious true story of two pensioners and their whippet who sail from Stone in Staffordshire to Carcassonne in the South of France in a narrowboat ...'WE COULD BORE OURSELVES TO DEATH, DRINK OURSELVES TO DEATH, OR HAVE A BIT OF AN ADVENTURE...'When they retired Terry and Monica Darlington decided to sail their canal narrowboat across the Channel and down to the Mediterranean, together with their whippet Jim. They took advice from experts, who said they would die, together with their whippet Jim.On the Phyllis May you dive through six-foot waves in the Channel, are swept down the terrible Rh ne, and fight for your life in a storm among the flamingos of the Camargue.You meet the French nobody meets - poets, captains, historians, drunks, bargees, men with guns, scholars, madmen - they all want to know the people on the painted boat and their narrow dog.You visit the France nobody knows - the backwaters of Flanders, the canals beneath Paris, the heavenly Yonne, the lost Burgundy Canal, the islands of the Sa ne, and the forbidden ways to the Mediterranean.Aliens, dicks, trolls, vandals, gongoozlers, killer fish and the walking dead all stand between our three innocents and their goal - many-towered Carcassonne.

Notes

The delightful true story of two pensioners and their whippet Jim who sail from Stone in Staffordshire to Carcassonne in the South of France in a narrowboat. Before setting off they took advice from nautical experts, who told them they would lose their boat, their dog, and their own lives, but they went ahead all the same.

Back Cover

'WE COULD BORE OURSELVES TO DEATH, DRINK OURSELVES TO DEATH, OR HAVE A BIT OF AN ADVENTURE...' When they retired Terry and Monica Darlington decided to sail their canal narrowboat across the Channel and down to the Mediterranean, together with their whippet Jim.They took advice from experts, who said they would die, together with their whippet Jim. On the Phyllis May you dive through six-foot waves in the Channel, are swept down the terrible Rhne, and fight for your life in a storm among the flamingos of the Camargue. You meet the French nobody meets - poets, captains, historians, drunks, bargees, men with guns, scholars, madmen - they all want to know the people on the painted boat and their narrow dog. You visit the France nobody knows - the backwaters of Flanders, the canals beneath Paris, the heavenly Yonne, the lost Burgundy Canal, the islands of the Sane, and the forbidden ways to the Mediterranean. Aliens, dicks, trolls, vandals, gongoozlers, killer fish and the walking dead all stand between our three innocents and their goal - many-towered Carcassonne. 'WRITTEN WITH THE AUTHOR'S GLORIOUS SENSE OF HUMOUR, THIS IS ONE OF THOSE JOURNEYS YOU NEVER WANT TO END'- The Good Book Guide

Author Biography

Terry Darlington was brought up in Pembroke Dock during the war, between a Sunderland flying boat base and an oil terminal.He survived and moved to Staffordshire, where he founded Research Associates, the international market research firm, and Stone Master Marathoners, the running club.Like many Welshmen he is talkative and confiding, but ill at ease with practical matters and liable to linger in public houses.He likes boating but knows nothing about it.Monica Darlington comes from Radnorshire.Her father was a gardener and her mother a housemaid, or perhaps it was the other way round.She has a first class degree in French, has run thirty marathons, and can leap tall buildings with a single bound.Her three children have all reproduced themselves, removing doubts about whether she and Terry are the same species.She quite likes boating but knows nothing about it.Brynula Great Expectations (Jim) is sprung from a long line of dogs with ridiculous names.Jim can run at forty miles an hour.He is cowardly, thieving, and disrespectful and hates boating.Visit their website at

Review

A richly atmospheric journey suffused with summer heat and occasional cabin fever, reaching its climax on the flamingo-studded inland sea of the Camargue... The writing is as muscular and lean as its canine hero, conjuring up dawn mist or giant catfish in prose haiku before moving on to the next killer one-liner... A rich and winning comic debut, destined to become a classic of the downshifting genre * Sunday Telegraph *
A stunning book - racy, chatty, touching and very, very funny -- Joanna Lumley
The most amazing canal journey of them all * Daily Mail *
One of my favourite books of the year -- Emma Soames * Saga Magazine *
An astonishing read -- Libby Purves * Radio 4 Midweek *

Promotional

The hilarious true story of two pensioners and their whippet who sail from Stone in Staffordshire to Carcassonne in the South of France in a narrowboat...

Kirkus US Review

A retired British couple takes their canal boat on a cross-Channel expedition.When some pesky person asked why the author and wife Monica had abandoned the quiet pensioners' life and taken to the waterways, Darlington explained it as "an adventure before it's too late. They say at our age you are at the end of vigour." This became something of a running joke during their travels, since this lively pair was obviously far from decrepit. After all, they were adventurous enough to accept a friend's booze-soaked challenge to sail through England and across the Channel to France, then wind their way to Carcassonne in their 60-foot by 7-foot narrowboat, "a preposterous shape" for attempting this never-accomplished feat of seamanship. As company, they took along their trusty whippet Jim, "a dog that hates boating." Though the setup seems to promise a lighthearted travelogue, and Darlington does occasionally display a bracing, dry wit, their journey was often colored by bleak memories of the destruction and suffering the author witnessed as a child during World War II. In one the most moving instances of emotionally charged reminiscence, Darlington felt the presence of his long-dead father and longed "to press my face against his rough air-force trousers, and smell the tobacco and feel his hands on my head." Unfortunately, those moments of luminosity are rare in a text more notable for overblown vacation babble, long-winded stories, grand overstatement and pompous bombast - plus some daunting British slang impenetrable to all but the most seasoned Anglophile. Boat enthusiasts will appreciate the insider terminology about locks and dock life, however, and Darlington's gentle swipes at the French (whom he quite likes) are mildly amusing.Some entertaining moments amid the tedium, but best saved for a reader's retirement years, either as inspiration or to fill a lot of spare time. (Kirkus Reviews)

Prizes

Short-listed for Saga Award for Wit 2005

Review Text

A richly atmospheric journey suffused with summer heat and occasional cabin fever, reaching its climax on the flamingo-studded inland sea of the Camargue... The writing is as muscular and lean as its canine hero, conjuring up dawn mist or giant catfish in prose haiku before moving on to the next killer one-liner... A rich and winning comic debut, destined to become a classic of the downshifting genre

Review Quote

"Written with the author's glorious sense of humor, this is one of those journeys you never want to end."-Good Book Guide,UK "A rich and winning comic debut, destined to become a classic."-Daily Telegraph,UK "One of the most hilarious travel memoirs ever written!"-Booklist

Promotional "Headline"

The hilarious true story of two pensioners and their whippet who sail from Stone in Staffordshire to Carcassonne in the South of France in a narrowboat...

Excerpt from Book

Chapter One Moon River Stone to Westminster On the floor of the Star Inn Jim was fighting to push his entire body inside a bag of pork scratchings. I could have had a dog that ate its dinner, a dog that barked and wagged its tail, a normal dog, a dog with fur. But the book said a whippet was the easiest dog and I had trouble enough already. Whippets are hounds-miners'' dogs, racers, rabbiters. They are very thin. On top they are velvet and underneath they are bald. They are warm and smell of buttered toast. They love every living creature to a rapture unless you are small and furry and trying to get the hell out of here. They like running the towpaths and thieving off fishermen; but fire up the engine, cast off the ropes, and it''s the eyes, the betrayed eyes. So the narrowboat Phyllis May has a dog that hates boating. We''ll call him Gonzales, I had said, because he''s fast, or Leroy because he''s golden brown, or we''ll have a dog called Bony Moronie. Good thinking, said Monica, and named him Jim. He''s your dog, she said-you look after him. I read Your Dog Is Watching You, and Your Dog Will Get You in the End, and How to Stop Your Dog Behaving Like a Bloody Animal. Jim and I went to school on many dark evenings, but neither of us learned very much. The door from the canal opened and it was Clive. Like most inland boaters, Clive looks like a pregnant bear. Got you, he shouted-greedy greedy, early drinkies, surprise surprise, make mine a pint. He sat down and slapped his pipe and his Breton sailor''s hat on the table. Jim was ecstatic. Jim sees Clive and Beryl as part of our pack, who sometimes make their escape owing to my lack of leadership and poor attention to detail. But through his tracking skills we get them back, and How about some scratchings? Are you nervous? asked Clive, pulling Jim out of his trouser pocket. Yes, I said. I''m worried about getting away from Stone. I might crash or fall in. People will be watching. Clive has a Dudley accent, and a deep voice, as if he is saying something important. Beryl and I should never have encouraged you, he said. You are old, you''ve only got one eye, you are a coward and you can''t jump. You''re no good at anything useful. Monica ran your business while you wandered around being nasty to your customers. By the end of the summer I''ll be fine, I said. I can handle the fear-running a market research agency scared me stiff too. We had another pint, to handle the fear. TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO A bunch of engineers met in a public house by a canal. They decided the size of the locks on the English canal system and then they had another round and started talking about girls. In the morning the secretary could not remember what had been decided, or indeed where he was, so to be on the safe side he chose the narrowest gauge mentioned in his notes, which was seven feet. That is how the English narrow lock was born, and the English narrowboat-the cigarette, the pencil, the eel, the strangest craft ever to slither down a waterway. The five windows of the Phyllis May lit the towpath for the length of a cricket pitch. With her flat roof, fairground lettering, brasses and flowers, a traditional narrowboat has a louche charm, though sixty feet by seven is a preposterous shape. Clive and I stepped into the front deck and down to the narrow saloon. Panelling, armchairs, lamps and pictures-second class on the Orient Express. You live in comfort, and you live sideways. Monica was curled on the sofa. Beryl folded her hands in her lap, in a cornflower stare. Clive stood in the middle of the saloon. We have news, he said-we are forsaking earthly things. We are selling our house and our possessions, giving what is left to the poor, and having a narrowboat built, on which we will live out our days. Ah the poor earthbound rabble, tramping their warren streets-for me the silver highway, the gypsy life: my companion the heron, lone sentinel of the waterways, my constituency the ducks, my gardens the broad valleys, my drawing room the public bar of the inn called Navigation. I''ve been trying to persuade the bugger for years, said Beryl. But first we are going up the Bristol Channel with you on the Phyllis May, said Clive. But I am not going up the Bristol Channel on the Phyllis May, I protested. The Phyllis May is a canal boat. There are fifty-foot tides and the Severn Bore. We will finish up dashed through the window of Woolworths in Bewdley. I don''t think there is a Woolworths in Bewdley, said Clive, but if there is I can pick up a CD of Felix Mendelssohn and his Hawaiian Serenaders. And next year when you go to France we will all put out to sea together, and sail across the Channel side by side. I could feel my palpitations coming on. Clive, I said, narrowboats don''t sail across the Channel. I was brought up by the sea. I remember the empty seats in school when boys drowned themselves. I might sail the Phyllis May to France if there were thirty Tommies to take back and it would tip the balance in the struggle for Europe. Otherwise it''s the lorry, and a crane into Calais. Let''s have a drop more of that Banks''s, said Clive-you know I have blue water experience. You mean we went out once from Padstow, said Beryl, in a cruiser, and nearly drowned. That was a trick of the tide, said Clive. But they warned you, said Beryl, they begged you, they called it the Maelstrom and you went straight into it. But we got back in, said Clive. Yes, said Beryl, we got back in. Is this Old Speckled Hen a strong one? asked Clive-it tastes so smooth. The thing is you rope them up together side by side, so if one breaks a belt on the engine the other tows it out of the way of the tankers and car ferries. Piece of piss really. Clive, I said, you come from Dudley, you have been to sea once and you nearly didn''t come back, and now you want to put at hazard the December years I could spend in the Star or watching Kylie Minogue on the box. But narrowboats are like those toys, said Clive. The bottom is full of bricks so they roll back. What about that chap, I said, who built a narrowboat in Liverpool and set out across the Irish Sea? How did he do? asked Clive. No one ever found out, I said. Must have run into a maelstrom, said Clive. Is that single malt as good as you say it is? He sat back and smiled. Jim looked at him with eyes full of love. He had found a leader at last. When I woke up the next morning, and I wished I had not woken up the next morning, I realized that I had agreed to sail an inland boat across the English Channel, roped up to a madman. A CANAL LOCK IS A SIMPLE IDEA. YOU CLOSE the gate behind you and empty the water out at the other end and you sink down, and then you open the gates in front of you and sail away. Going up you fill the lock instead of emptying it. In real life locks are dark and slimy and foaming. They flood you and hang you by the stern. Often they don''t work. But today I wound up the paddles in the lock gate with my new aluminium key without spraining my wrist, and when the lock was empty heaved on the beams and opened the gates without shouting for help. The Phyllis May mumbled out of the Star lock into the sunshine, Jim riding shotgun on the roof. Friends and family waved. Pints were brandished in the sunshine and granddaughters wept. The swans that nest below the Star dipped their beaks and raised them in perfect time. Past the tower of St. Michael''s, to drinking, and dancing, and waving, and tears, and coarse encouraging shouts. A Cunarder leaving New York, country style. Under Aston lock the Trent valley falls away in spires and farms. It''s like Ulysses, I said, whom I so closely resemble. Come, my friends, ''Tis not too late to seek a newer world . . . It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Your dog has jumped ship, said Monica, and is probably in Rugeley. And there is a corpse under the prop, so you''ll have to go down the weed-hatch again. WHEN MONICA AND I BOUGHT THE PHYLLIS May she was worn out, and we had her refurbished. We had not had a boat before and sometimes we would go down to the cut and lick her all over. We loved the gangling shape and the long windows, we loved the curve of the bow and the front deck where you could sit, and the teak and oak saloon running on and on into the galley. We loved the iron stove, the shower that worked, the little bedroom cabin, the warm engine-room. We held the grab-rail along the roof and walked the gunwale, trying not to fall in. I would stand on the back counter, leaning on the tiller, musing upon our boatyard manager''s sins and on the follies of the yard before him. But one day we found a boatyard we could trust and soon we sailed away, in shining grey and white and crimson, with primroses on the roof and a brass tunnel light at the bow, and our names on the engine-room in fairground lettering a foot high, and ran into the first bridge. The Phyllis May is not right yet-no narrowboat is right yet. Lumps of metal drop into her bilges, or she leaks from the rear. Then I strip naked, grease myself all over, and hang upside down among the ironmongery, grunting and cursing. It is dark, it is wet, I freeze and I burn and I get stuck and we call out the boatyard anyway. I have gone all sweaty in my hair so let''s talk about something else. Jim lets me use his kennel as my office. I put my laptop on it and sit on the coal-box with my feet on Jim. The coal-box has Phyllis May painted on the front side and Kiss Me Again on the bac

Details ISBN0553816691 Author Terry Darlington Pages 432 Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd Year 2006 ISBN-10 0553816691 ISBN-13 9780553816693 Format Paperback Publication Date 2006-05-03 Imprint Bantam Books Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom Media Book Language English DEWEY 914.40484 DOI 10.1604/9780553816693 UK Release Date 2006-05-03 AU Release Date 2006-05-03 NZ Release Date 2006-05-03 Illustrations Line drawings Alternative 9781409084969 Audience General

We've got this

At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love!


TheNile_Item_ID:3026602;
  • Condition: Brand New
  • ISBN-13: 9780553816693
  • Publication Year: 2006
  • Format: Paperback
  • Language: English
  • Book Title: Narrow Dog to Carcassonne
  • Item Height: 198mm
  • Author: Terry Darlington
  • Publisher: Transworld Ltd
  • Genre: Sports
  • Topic: Ships, Travel Writing
  • Item Width: 127mm
  • Item Weight: 293g
  • Number of Pages: 432 Pages

PicClick Insights - Narrow Dog To Carcassonne by Terry Darlington (English) Paperback Book PicClick Exclusive

  •  Popularity - 0 watchers, 0.0 new watchers per day, 215 days for sale on eBay. 0 sold, 7 available.
  •  Best Price -
  •  Seller - 1,207,744+ items sold. 1.7% negative feedback. Great seller with very good positive feedback and over 50 ratings.

People Also Loved PicClick Exclusive