Description

‘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 Rhone, 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 Saone, 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.

Publisher 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 * Written with the author's glorious sense of humour, this is one of those journeys you never want to end * The Good Book Guide * Their personal motto could be "brave but never foolhardy" * The Times * Wonderfully entertaining. I read Narrow Dog pretty well at one sitting -- Timothy West and Prunella Scales It has a real unputdownable quality and once started you might as well cancel any appointments until you've finished * Canal and Riverboat * A wonderfully funny book, full of brilliantly written passages -- Brian Patten