The Worst Journey In The Midlands – Sam Llewellyn – Heinemann – 1983

Re-reading books is something I rarely do. And for that reason, I recycled and gave away masses of books a couple of months into lockdown. Most had been read, some had not, and a few were reference books on subjects I’m no longer interested in, or subjects where I have several covering the same ground. 

Whilst I was sorting through them, I came across this book and recalled two things about it. Firstly, that it was about someone who rowed the River Thames from source to sea and secondly that it was an amusing read, something one might guess from the title which is an obvious play on The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s account of  Scott’s ill-fated Polar expedition.

Not that having a “humorous” title is a real indication that a book is in any way funny. In fact, experience suggests it’s more likely to be the opposite.

Sam’s writing is something I first came across in the horticultural journal Hortus, where his pieces were often the best thing in each edition, standing out as funny and sparky amongst other well-written, but quite dull content.

So, of the two things I recalled about the book, one was wrong, or at least partly so. It’s the story of a journey from the upper reaches of the River Severn to the Thames at Westminster.

The planned route is from the upper Severn to Tewksbury up the Avon to Warwick along the Grand Union Canal to Oxford then down the Thames to London, a distance of 350 miles. He starts under a bridge in the town of Llanidloes, initially in an aluminium canoe, until Welshpool where he switches to Magdalen, a 10-foot Victorian mahogany rowing boat for the rest of the journey. And whilst that sounds like a great vessel, it really isn’t. It’s days as a Royal Navy transport are long behind it, when he finds it rotting under a bush on a Dorset beach. Sam sets about renovating it, which I’m sure many wouldn’t even attempt as the wood it’s built from seems to have the consistency of stilton. Nevertheless, after applying lots of plastic padding filler, silicone caulking, a copper plate and some new planking over the clinker-built relic he is set to go. Unsurprising there is a certain amount of jeopardy throughout as to whether the boat will, last, sink or just fall apart. 

But the dodginess of the boat is not the only thing that makes the adventure more of an ordeal, the weather is quite grim. Taking place in the autumn, 1982 had (to that point) the wettest October on record, although thanks to global warming we have doubtlessly eclipsed that. Plus, again thanks to climate change, it was probably colder back then. Whatever the case it is clearly pretty horrible trip towards the end.

Despite being nearly 40 years old, the book has not dated apart from a couple of references to Sony Walkman and The Jam and as it turns out the second thing, I remembered about the book is true and it is very amusing. Whilst the author is a prolific one across a number of fictional genres it is something of a shame he has not written more books like this one as it kept me entertained, amused but also yearn to get on the water myself, something I have not done for over 12 months and miss greatly.

It Was Fun While It Lasted – A J Lane – Whittles Publishing – 1998.

It Was Fun While It Lasted – A J Lane – Whittles Publishing – 1998.

In my mind’s eye the life of a lighthouse keeper is, or rather was, a lonely but interesting and wild one, much like being a mountain-top fire-spotter.

Some have written about the latter occupation. Most famously Jack Kerouac who captured his time as a lookout on Desolation Peak in the Cascade mountains, in “Alone On A Mountain Top” from his autobiographical collection “Lonesome Traveller” and also in two of his fictional works, Dharma Bums and Desolation Angels.  I have read and enjoyed these and also the excellent Fire Season by Philip Connors; though not recently. And so, in my imagination a book about lighthouse keeping was likely to be equally engaging.

Accordingly, when I saw this book I seized upon it, and was drawn in further by the blurb on the back describing “A lively, at times hilarious, first-hand account of a lighthouse keeper’s life in the last traditional years before the introduction of helicopter reliefs and automation”.

However, had I thought about it more I may have also reached the conclusion that a book about being a lighthouse keeper might also be likely to be a bit dull, on the basis that living a life of constant regimen and routine, bound by isolation runs a good chance of veering towards the tedious.

This book leans towards the latter of those two perspectives. Representing an almost seven year period, from 1953 and published nearly forty years later it must, I feel, have relied on diaries. The fact that the author is able to talk about individual meals and specifically name many of the children and adults he corresponded with, for me, corroborates that.

And therein lies a difficulty. Using diaries as source material for a book is a strategy that succeeds or fails depending on the quality of the diaries and the skill of the author.

Also mentioned with some detail is the author’s writing work. He wrote a novel, short stories and magazine pieces and whilst he talks of a general lack of success, some of his work was published and he even had a few aired on radio with one being read by Bob Monkhouse.

Having the time to write must I guess be part of the reason he chose lighthouse keeping as an occupation, but you can if course have too much of a good thing and no doubt the tedium set in leading to various japes and pranks such as, alarmingly, rewiring colleagues’ accommodation.

Whilst the blurb may have over-egged the funny nature of this memoir, it did raise a few smiles and I particularly liked the episode where he bought a vintage bulb-style motor horn and persuaded his colleague there was an official instruction that it needed to be sounded at the end of the twice daily radio test.

And the book is not without other elements of interest. I would liked to have known more about how they caught fish using kites and wondered if the cairn built at Skerries Islands (off the Welsh coast near Anglesey), by a past lighthouse keeper, known rather wonderfully as Mad Hicks, still stands some sixty years later.

Mention of the launch of Sputnik within the text both pins the book in time and acts as a signal of changing times, accordingly it is perhaps of most interest as a piece of history and is, returning to the blurb “as complete an account as we are now ever likely to get of what it was like to keep a lighthouse in its last traditional year”.

The Pull of the River – Matt Gaw – Elliott & Thompson – 2019

If you have explored this blog site to any degree, you’ll have realised that most of the books that feature here are of some vintage; a number are even out of print and one, or two, should never have been printed in the first place. This is not to say that I don’t read recently published works. I certainly do – I was, until recently, the book reviewer for Bushcraft and Survival Skills Magazine which gave me the privilege of getting to read not only the newly published , but on occasion the pre-published.

But the fact is that the numbers of new books are outweighed by the treasures (of varying worth) that I gather as an incurable book-womble.

I recently reviewed John Wright for the aforementioned magazine where I said:

“I am already a big fan of John Wright. I like him even more having read that his “house is threatened with collapse under the weight of several hundred books”. As someone similarly afflicted it made me laugh out loud and John’s six previous books, are amongst my own house-threatening collection.”  

It is that bad.

All of which rambling discourse, is a preamble to saying this is a new book and so, a fairly rare occurrence for this site.

I don’t know where I found out about Matt Gaw’s book, but I’m glad I did.
The Pull of the River follows a year in which the author, not having paddled anything before,has riparian adventures, sometimes alone, but mostly with his friend James, who built their Canadian canoe. They travel rivers great and small, beautiful and uglified, natural and straight-jacketed with concrete.

Some of the trips involve wild camping and I couldn’t help but think that a blue tarp was not the best choice for that secretive practice. They are similarly badly kitted out to begin with, paddling in jeans and keeping their kit dry in carrier bags, until a capsize on the Thames in spate provides a frightening lesson in the inappropriate.

The book concludes with a trip along the Great Glen trail, an adventure I’ve enjoyed myself.

Having come, patron life to canoeing myself (word,) I xxxx with this book and its enthusiasm sense of adventure and sentiments, not least of all where it says…

“Part of the pull on the river is escape. To paddle on a river is to break into a new world, one feels free from the usual rules and confines of human society. On the water you are not a journalist, a father, an artist, or a friend. The salesman is drowned, the doctor turned to bubbling, wind-whipped foam, the office walls overcome and overwhelmed in a surging flood. We are free to wander alone and unchecked. Although there are only ever two ways to go, the possibilities seem endless. We are outside civilisation, away from it all.”

 

Max Wenner Mystery part two

Following on from my earlier piece on Max Wenner and his mysterious death, I have been doing more research. That sounds a bit more involved than the truth of the matter, which is that I have acquired a copy of “So It Was”, Michael A. Wenner’s autobiography. He was the nephew of Max, and so the first section of his book gives plenty of detail on his Wenner forebears, including his Uncle Max, who actually features on the cover, holding a hawk, as described in my earlier piece.

I was relieved to find  that the story I had pieced together was broadly correct. And, of course the biog. gave a lot more detail and background. Some minor details in my piece were incorrect. For instance, what I stated (repeating someone else’s mistake) was a photo of Max and his brother is it seems a picture of the brother and some Icelanders. However, I suspect that it was actually Max who took the photo, because the book emphasizes Max’s keen interests in the natural world and photography.

As well as giving family background and some personal details about Max , it has suggested some further lines of research. One of which is the Royal Flying Corps, in which Max served as a pilot during World War One. This may have been where he began his interest in photography as at that point in time military aircraft had a more observational role (including photographic reconnaissance), rather than being used for combat.

On Max’s demise the book is rather brief, but does introduce a curious new element. It says as follows “I must have been around fifteen in the mid to late ’30s when Max – returning by air from a visit to Essen, the home of a German lady of whom after Dolly’s death he had grown fond – unaccountably fell to his death from the aircraft. One of his fellow passengers was a Mr John Vincent Cain, a colourful entrepreneur and former smuggler of arms and planes to Franco – and possibly a not too reliable witness. The Daily Express reported Mr Cain as stating that he had watched my uncle ‘hurry on to the airliner at Cologne and…pen sheet after sheet of note-paper at furious speed; thrust the notes into his pocket and suddenly disappear into the back compartment..The letters stated to have been written were missing when Max’s body was found and were never recovered.’

I find it a little odd that the book’s author has relied on a newspaper article to tell this part of his  history, after all he was fifteen years of age at the time; hardly a child, but perhaps his recall failed him, nonetheless it does seem strange to me.

The newspaper tale is not entirely accurate since, as we have seen, the letter (singular) was found on the poor man’s body.

What is also curious is the presence of an arms smuggler in the story.  This only adds weight to the Agatha Christie-esque colour of the whole tale.

I shall in due course update my earlier piece, to include more of the background to Max Wenner, provided by this biography. And there are of course more lines of research to take forward, not least of which is the curious Mr Cain, for whom my initial research has proved largely fruitless.

The Max Wenner Mystery

Max Wenner was a person who was referred to in a previous blog post, having fleetingly been mentioned in the book The Prince of Poachers.

That slight reference really engaged my interest and since then I have done a little internet research. By that I mean I have looked for the full story and, having failed to find one, have pulled together various references (from the links at the foot of this page), some of which are prime sources and  others not, to piece together the story. The picture that emerges is a hazy, but intriguing one. It could perhaps form the basis of a film, certainly a book and undoubtedly a documentary for television. But that is not to trivialise, however, one man’s tragic demise.

So let’s start with my own original datum point, the book excerpt. Quoting it in full, starting by talking of Long Mynd moor it says:

“I think it must be the ideal spot for a gliding club; there seemed to be very few windless days. A German gentleman, Max Wenner, was a leading light in this gliding idea there. He fell – or was he pushed? – out of a plane over the Channel. He was staying in a pub in Minsterly. Somehow Father was in on the search of his rooms. I remember seeing a gun in the shape and size of a fountain pen that fired a three-sided bullet.”

This is, my research has shown, is very much a mixture of vagueness and error – mostly the latter.

The man in question was an Englishman of Swiss extraction (not German) and very anti-gliding, which he felt disturbed the grouse on the Long Mynd moor shoot. He was co-owner of that shoot, which explains why the author’s father, one of the shoot’s gamekeepers, was present when the rooms were searched (or perhaps just cleared). Though mention of him having rooms at a pub is curious as Wenner lived fairly locally. And finally, his death was on the other side of the Channel and not above it.

Mr Max Victor Wenner was of Swiss descent from a family of wealthy textile manufacturers who had settled in England during the 19th century. Born around 1888, he was the son of Alfred Wenner and his wife Malvine (nee Egloff). Alfred had initially been married to Louise Egloff. They had three children together before she died aged just 25. He subsequently wed her older sister, having six more children.

Albert’s family wealth came from the textile industry and that is no doubt what drew him to the cotton capital of Manchester. He had premises in the city at Greenwood Street and seems to have diversified his business interests, and articles can be found where he is selling drilling machines and “an invention of improvements in fire bars and grates.”

The family lived in Earnscliffe Villa, a large house in Alderley Edge, Cheshire.

Albert died in 1911 at around 56 years of age. The following year, Max Wenner gives his address as Woodside, Trafford Road, Alderley Edge, though I don’t know if this is solely his home, or the whole family relocated following the patriarch’s death.

Malvine died in 1925 aged 77 by which time, or following which, Max had moved to Garthmeilio Hall, Langwm, Conwy, North Wales.

Max was keen on the outdoors, particularly birds and more generally shooting and fishing.

He was elected to the British Ornithologists Union in 1912 and appears in their publication “Ibis” and  a number of other periodicals. For example a 1926 issue of The Field quotes him talking about stoats’ interest in the guts from rabbits he’d shot and there are a number of articles on birds carrying his name, including one from December 1933 on “Vipers Preying on Young Birds” – including photographs.

His brother Captain Alfred Emil Wenner was a British Army officer and the pair were photographed earlier that year on 14th July, by the River Thvera in Iceland, after they had caught 55 Salmon by lunchtime, with another 22 landed afterwards.

Much of this family biographical information comes from the WebPages of the State Archive of St Gallen in Switzerland, which also includes photographs of Earnscliffe Villa,  Garthmeilio Hall and of Max and his wife. In one, which I think might be at Garthmeilio Hall judging by the balustrade in the background, he looks very much the countryman. Wearing a heavy jacket, plus-fours, thick socks and stout shoes, he stands before the camera with a hawk perched on his left hand.

By 1934 Max was living at Batchcott Hall. when he bought the manor of Church Stretton, to the east of Long Mynd moor. Manor here seems to be in the sense of a tract of land, rather than a manor house. He was one of three owners of Long Mynd, and it might be assumed that this ownership came with the manor. Batchcott is a hamlet to the north of the moor.

He owned 6,000 acres in all and spent a large sum improving the hall and building a bird sanctuary and lakes for trout fishing.

He’s also said to have put a lot of effort into developing shooting on the moor and so when gliding started there in the summer of 1934 he did not approve. Though It’s not clear whether that was due to thinking that the gliders themselves disturbed the birds, or because of the hoi-polloi, who came to watch the engineless planes, tramping across the land (it does seem to have been a spectator sport). Legal action followed, presumably initiated by Wenner and partners, with a four-day hearing closing on 15th March 1935 with Justice Crossman “effectively” banning flying gliders from Long Mynd, as it “interferes with grouse shooting”.

Wenner is described as “devoted” to his wife, Martha Alice Spinner, known as “Dollie”. She was about eight years his senior and aged around 58 passed away in July 1936.

He was in the habit of flying to Germany and Switzerland for winter sports.

On one of those winter sports trips in Switzerland, he befriended the 34 year-old Olga Buchenshultz. She was secretary to the Swedish Consul-General at the German town of Duren.

The friendship developed and they became engaged to be married in the second half of 1936.

Olga apparently had doubts whether a German woman should marry an Englishman, perhaps because of the European political situation, or was this to do with the 15 year age gap – probably not as that was not unusual at the time, I would suspect his recent bereavement.

Whatever the case during Wenner’s visit to Olga in Kupferdreh, a district in the south east of the German city of Essen on December 30 she promised to marry him. Wenner’s brothers and sisters it seems were aware and agreeable to this engagement.

On Monday 4th January 1937 Wenner started the journey back to England taking a Belgian airliner from Cologne to Brussels.  Fellow passengers described him as seeming agitated and spending 20 minutes writing a single letter of many pages, which he put in his pocket and then left the compartment going to the rear of the plane.

The aircraft was flying at 3,000 above unbroken cloud over Limburg, when the other passengers heard a bang and felt the plane lurch. This was ascribed to the plane’s rear door slamming shut and they seem to have guessed what the reason for that was and a nurse was who was onboard fainted.

The man’s body was tragically found four days later on 8^Th January, in a forest outside Genk, Belgium. It was apparently unblemished apart from “a scratched nose and buttons torn from his coat, there was no visible sign of injury”, apparently due to the trees slowing his fall. An unfinished letter to Olga was found in his pocket.

Belgian officials called his death a “mysterious accident” and it seems one of his brothers looked into matters speaking to Fraulein Buchenschultz.

Other passengers flew on in another plane to Croydon (Britain’s major international airport at the time) where they spoke to the press and the story was reported in newspapers as far away as Singapore and Australia.

Shortly before his death Max had made a will. This was perhaps sensible given his wife’s passing. I’m assuming here that she was a significant, if not his sole beneficiary. However, in light of his curious demise, one might view this differently, particularly as he left Olga Buchenshultz, £2,000 “in case anything should happen to me before our marriage.”

The will was proved in May 1937 and he left a large part of his estate, including Church Stretton manor and his share if the grouse moor to his friend and former agent William Humphrey, a renowned breeder of English Setters.

According to one reference I came across Max Wenner is said to have been ‘well connected in the highest political circles, both in England and Germany” and so it has been supposed that his unusual death had a “connection with espionage”. But I have found no prime source for this speculation.

As a true-life story, it does have the ring of an Agatha Christie novel.

Returning to the origins of my research, the mention of a fountain pen that fired bullets does make us in these times think of James Bond, but back in an era when the sword-stick was not uncommon, pen-guns were not necessarily the preserve of spies and spooks and this was a man who would have been au fait with many firearms.

The mention of Wenner having rooms in a pub at Minsterley is curious though, as it is not far from his home (about 32 miles by road) but is perhaps a mistake by an unreliable source.

All in all, it is an intriguing, but tragic tale.

There is a follow up piece to this post.

 

SOURCES

 

http://www.ukairfieldguide.net/airfields/Church-Stretton

http://www.ukairfieldguide.net/airfields/Long-Mynd

https://m.facebook.com/graysgundogs/posts/1797086413838175

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol10/pp72-120

https://www.churchstretton.co.uk/

http://mvsetters.com/MrHumphrey.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Mynd

https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v051n02/p0271-p0278.pdf

https://www.lax-a.net/good-old-times-in-iceland/

https://www.pestsmart.org.au/behaviour-of-stoats/

http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/singfreepressb19370204.2.87

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/58778222

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47776628

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11954611

http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19370106-1.2.41

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/34404/page/3617/data.pdf

http://scope.staatsarchiv.sg.ch/detail.aspx?ID=114333

https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1937-01-01/1937-12-31?basicsearch=max%20wenner%201937&exactsearch=false&retrievecountrycounts=false

https://prabook.com/web/michael.wenner/564292

http://scope.staatsarchiv.sg.ch/Detail.aspx?ID=114334

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=444746.0

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1474-919X.1914.tb06642.x

https://archive.org/stream/britishbirds2319unse/britishbirds2319unse_djvu.txt

https://archive.org/stream/ibis_21914brit/ibis_21914brit_djvu.txt

https://archive.org/stream/britishbirds2219unse/britishbirds2219unse_djvu.txt

http://scope.staatsarchiv.sg.ch/Detail.aspx?ID=114211

http://scope.staatsarchiv.sg.ch/detail.aspx?ID=114197

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/24001/page/3514/data.pdf

https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/articles/tm4_mach19.pdf

South West Coast Path Coincidences And Books

It’s pretty much certain that I have spoken about life’s strange coincidences and synchronicities, a few times, there are a couple of posts here that I can think of .

On Sunday I posted about Simon Armitage and linked to a review I did about Walking Away his book telling the story of walking the South West Coastal Path. Then yesterday a colleague told me that later in the Summer she is walking  a hundred mile stretch of that route.

She’s someone I often talk to about books and so I mentioned Simon’s memoir and also 500 Mile Walkies by Mark Wallington, which is also about the Path. It’s a good book, but not one I’ve read recently, or even thought about for some time. Certainly not one I recall ever reading anyone else mention.

And then this morning I was reading Walk magazine, and in it was an article that referenced Mark’s book.

The piece in question was about Raynor Winn who has written a biographical account of walking that path (where her husband was mistaken for Simon Armitage), at a time of extreme personal difficulty. It’s called The Salt Path and of course, the coincidences involved means I must add it to my reading list.

Sitelines – Underground, Overground, Wombling Free

Yesterdays BBC Radio 4 schedule proved rich pickings on the outdoors, although the programmes were just after midnight and in the early hours, so I can’t claim to have listened to them live, but I did enjoy them later in the day.

First up was the final episode of Book of the Week, which featured the Knud Rasmussen glacier as part of the serialisation of Robert  McFarland’s Underworld.

In truth I find McFarlane over-rated, and this programme is a very good example of why authors are often not the best people to read their work for the enjoyment of others. He renders his own words curiously dull, but the subjects maintain one’s interest, I shall  catch up via the omnibus edition,  and expect it may include McFarlane’s urbex experiences I first read about six years ago.

Open Country explored the Sussex Weald (a word, I discovered, that means forest in Old English and is related to the German Wald) a countryside landscape shaped by the centuries of iron-working.

And Farming Today  was on the topic of Invasive Species, a subject that is always interesting and often alarming. Japanese knotweed and the American signal crayfish were, as you might expect, amongst the chief villains, but I am slightly sceptical about the received wisdom, that the poor old white clawed crayfish is a put -upon native, after reading in Ken Thompson’ invasive species book Where Do Camels Belong? that their genetic diversity is not very varied, unlike European populations, signalling that they might not themselves be native. And I hooted with laughter at the fluff-chucking fishermen worrying about non-natives in the UK whilst, without a smidge of irony, fishing for American rainbow trout.

You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet(i)!?

Today I read a very strange story about the Indian Army finding footprints belonging to the Yeti – nearly 3 feet long!

It’s all very odd – not that people would believe in nonsense – this is the sort of thing I file alongside people who think there are big cats roaming wild in the UK – but that professional military personnel are involved.

If it was the first of April I could understand it.

A 97 year old runner,RJ Ripper,a spider,unstoppable Liv & Outback Mike

And so, to the Banff Mountain Film Festival‘s blue programme, which I saw last Friday.

As an aside you have to be careful when you tell people you are going to see films described as blue!

The films themselves were great and I think I enjoyed them more than the red programme, although perhaps only by the slimmest of margins.

The films all carry a theme of determination and not giving up.

For The Love Of Mary was the very touching story of George Etzweiler, who’s still taking part in the annual 7.6 mile race up Mount Washington at ninety-seven. Ninety-seven!!

Living in the Nepalese capital city Kathmandu, Himalayan mountain biker Rajesh Mager – the RJ in the film RJ Ripper – despite starting out with a bike he built out of junk, perseveres to become a champion in his sport.

Like Robert the Bruce’s legendary spider  Margo Hayes persists, persists and persists until she is the first woman to climb a 5.15 grade mountain, the tale told in Reel Rock: Break On Through.

If you were a world class climber who had fallen and been seriously injured, would your next step be to take up BASE jumping? And then if you did, would you do it in the dark? And if that led to another bone-crunching injury, what would your next step be? Well for Liv Sansoz it was to climb all 82 of the 4,000m peaks in the Alps in one year and ski or paraglide down where possible. Title captured the highs and load of this epic feat. Given that I am still  limping  following orthopaedic surgery and my “good” foot is now starting to play up I can only take inspiration from such fortitude.

There was a short called Rogue Elements Corbet’s Couloir, which was just kinda OK. And this is where some of the Banff Films fall short. Not through any fault of their own, but because we are used to seeing images (still and moving,) of skiers, snowboarders, mountain bikers etc doing extreme activities to sell things, so that some of the short films of extreme pursuits now feel like adverts.

And lastly, my favourite overall from both sets of films, Surviving The Outback.

It featured a survival guy I was not previously aware of, Mike Atkinson, re-enacting a survival story I was similarly unaware of. “Outback Mike” retraces the 1932 escape journey of two Germans who became stranded when their plane came down on a remote part of the Australian coast.

There is a book of that survival story, “Flight Into Hell”, written by the pilot Hans Bertram. In fact, Mike is shown reading a copy in one shot of his film. I’ve been trying to get my hands on a copy, but whilst it’s very easy to get hold of one in the original German (which I don’t read), finding an English version is proving to be an unfruitful exercise so far.

Hidden Nature – Alys Fowler

Hidden Nature – Alys Fowler – 2017 – Hodder and Staunton

There cannot be, I imagine, many books that have on their cover recommendations from Women’s Weekly, Good Housekeeping, The Guardian and Gay Star News. But then there are can’t be many books that represent a confluence between kayaking, botany and a journey of sexual identity.

I like canoeing, I like canals, I like botany, I like British native fauna and flora (although I could have coped without the five page dissertation on mosses), I like Alys Fowler (her Thrifty Forager is on my bookshelves) and so it doesn’t seem like a surprise that I really like this book. But there is a world of difference between writing an instructive gardening book and an engaging biography, particularly one that reveals a traumatic period in the subject’s life.

Nevertheless, she pulls it off and whilst Alys’ prose drifts towards the purple at times she manages to maintain enough literary freeboard to keep the reader onboard.

Hidden Nature charts Alys’ falling out of love with gardening and in love with paddling the Birmingham canal network in an inflatable kayak. Entwined with this is the voyage of emotional transition as she realises that her heterosexual marriage is not what she truly wants and falls in love with a woman.

I understand the first of those journeys having, like Alys, fallen out of love with gardening, not through any crie de coeur, but instead by a combination of overdoing horticultural theory whilst neglecting the practical, and a need to walk in woods and sit by rivers

I don’t know if enjoyable is ever the word for a book where a soul is laid bare, but I did appreciate the tales of neglected spots, canal history and lore, and all manner of water-borne encounters.

It is also inspiring. Firstly, in that it is possible to have a life-changing emotional event and come through the other side.

And on a smaller scale of importance that wild adventures can be had in the middle of a city. It did momentarily make me want to buy a packraft and go exploring, but then I don’t have a partially neglected post-industrial canal network on my doorstep. But then that’s not the raison d’etre of this book, it’s not an Alastair Humpreys’ work intended to inspire adventures.

Like a slow puncture, the book sags a bit at the end, but the current sees it home.

Sitelines – Great Lives- Alexander Gardner, Richard Burton, Sitting Bull.

Over the Christmas holiday period  (was it over a month ago already?) I caught a programme called Great Lives on BBC Radio. Selected by author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera it featured the story of Alexander Gardner, Scottish-American traveller, explorer, adventurer and soldier. This was the remarkable tale of a turbaned white man who led units in the Maharaja’s Sikh Army in 19th century India.

That episode lead me to the Great Lives webpages.

This is a biographical series, where guests choose someone they have found inspiring and a subject expert who adds detail and context.

I quickly uncovered two more interesting episodes. Firstly Richard Burton. Not the Welsh actor and piss-artist, but the massively more interesting Victorian explorer, adventurer, soldier, author, poet, translator…and sexologist, who was chosen by author Monica Ali.

And then one about Lakota leader Sitting Bull, where I found the expert was a Professor of American and Indigenous Histories at the University of East Anglia, called Jaqueline Fierce Eagle. It was only later that I rather disappointingly discovered, that she was actually Jacqueline Fear-Segal.

With 47 series of Great Lives, I think I have barely started mining this seam of great downloadable radio content, and I can’t wait to unearth more.

A Thor in One’s Side

This is a really interesting radio programme from 2007 that I stumbled across the Friday before last and have just listened to again. The schedule blurb describes it as follows:

“In 1947, a crew of intrepid and hard-bitten Norwegians first set out on what was, on the face of it, a pretty flimsy premise – that you could cross the mighty Pacific Ocean from Peru to Polynesia with nothing more solid than a balsa wood raft.

That raft, the Kon-Tiki, and the exploits of those Norwegians, led by the visionary Thor Heyerdahl, were to become world renowned.

Tony Robinson tells the story of Heyerdahl’s epic journey and it’s lasting effect on popular archaeology.”

This is not particularly accurate, since the programme focuses almost as much on the 2006 Tangaroa expedition, which included Heyerdahl’s grandson Olav, as the original expedition. That, I guess is the lasting effect of the Kon-Tiki, that it proved long-distance  ocean trips were possible  in fairly primitive craft, and perhaps opening up the archaeological enquiry into possibility that the Mayans, were capable coastal sailors, even if they didn’t make it to Easter Island.

However, this is somewhat ancillary to what Thor Heyerdahl actually set out to prove. His main premise, that the Pacific was settled by peoples from South America, seems to have been pretty solidly disproved by the DNA record.

But nevertheless it is an interesting programme, even if it is narrated by Tony Robinson, something that just goes to prove that in life you can’t have everything.

PS – this post has been getting loads of hits recently – can some kind soul please tell me why? Is it MCU related?