Narrow Dog to Indian River

Two pensioners and a whippet sail their English narrowboat down America's 1,000 mile long Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway...

Highly entertaining... combines the pioneering spirit of the Wild West with the best in armchair travel

As good as if not better than Narrow Dog to Carcassonne

Rollicking adventure... engaging, romantic and literary

Jim easily steals the laurels from Jerome's Montmorency

TERRY DARLINGTON was brought up in Pembroke Dock. He moved to Stone, Staffordshire, where he founded Research Associates, the market research company, and Stone Master Marathoners, the running club. Like many Welshmen he is ill at ease with practical matters and known to linger in public houses. He likes boating but doesn't know much about it. 
MONICA DARLINGTON's father was a gardener and her mother a housemaid. She was beauty queen of Brecon and Radnor, has a 1st class degree, has run 30 marathons, and leaps tall buildings with a single bound. She quite likes boating. 
BRYNULA GREAT EXPECTATIONS (JIM) is sprung from a long line of dogs with ridiculous names. Cowardly, thieving and disrespectful, he hates boating.

Having survived their voyage to Carcassonne, you might expect pensioners Terry and Monica Darlington and their whippet, Jim, to retire to a comfortable corner of their favourite pub. But no, they looked to the New World for an extraordinary new adventure... 
No-one had ever sailed an English narrowboat in the US before, for reasons that became abundantly clear during the 9-month voyage of the Phyllis May - including 30-mile sea crossings, blasting heat, tornadoes, hurricanes and all manner of intimidating wildlife. But the real danger came from the locals: the Good Ole Boys and Girls of the Deep South. Colonels, bums, captains, planters, heroes, drunks, gongoozlers, dancing dicks and beautiful spies - they all want to meet the Brits on the narrow painted boat and their thin dog and take them home and party them to death. Beautifully written, lovingly observed, and very funny, Narrow Dog to Indian River takes you on a dangerous, surprising and always entertaining journey as a thousand miles of the little-known South-East Seaboard unfold at six miles an hour- the golden marshes of the Carolinas, the incomparable cities of Charleston and Savannah, and the lost arcadias of Georgia and Florida.

Narrow Dog To Carcassonne

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 ...

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

A stunning book - racy, chatty, touching and very, very funny

The most amazing canal journey of them all

Written with the author's glorious sense of humour, this is one of those journeys you never want to end

Their personal motto could be "brave but never foolhardy"

Wonderfully entertaining. I read Narrow Dog pretty well at one sitting

It has a real unputdownable quality and once started you might as well cancel any appointments until you've finished

A wonderfully funny book, full of brilliantly written passages

Narrow Dog has been welcomed as a classic by one reviewer and is among Amazon's top twenty best-sellers

There's kind of a moral to the tale as well

Wonderful, moving and inspiring - it's a great read

David Moorcroft, Chief Executive, UK Athletics

It's more than a memoir, it can be treated as a quotations quiz. And you can quote me on that

Sparkling with comic and poetic insights to a France you never knew existed - a France viewed from the back side

Keith Wootton, Producer of ITV's Waterworld

A rich and winning comic debut, destined to become a classic

One of the most hilarious travel memoirs ever written!

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 www.narrowdog.com

'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 Rhône, 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 Saône, 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.

Terry Darlington

Big-hearted, ribald and rambunctious fun

Full of humour...I wholeheartedly recommend this gentle tale of two pensioners and their adventures as it's great fun

A memorable trip...narrated in Terry's surreal style, with the whimsical humour that has proved so popular

Terry Darlington's light-hearted travelogue combines some genuinely light-hearted moments with fascinating facts

At seventy-five, Terry and Monica Darlington had done everything they could think of doing, including starting a business and becoming athletes and running a literary society.Lately they had become boating adventurers and Terry a bestselling writer. But in their Midlands canal town in November, life was looking dull and short on surprises. 
Then their famous canal boat was destroyed by fire. Within a few days they had bought a new one and soon headed north in the Phyllis May 2 – to Liverpool, Lancaster, the Pennines and Wigan Pier. Terry recorded the journey, and alongside it the story of his life and his marriage and his dog Jim, with his broken ear like a flat cap, and Monica’s dog Jess, known with heartbreaking reason as the Flying Catastrophe. 
Funny, affecting and beautifully told, this is a story that brims with incident and excitement, and is full of the famous and fascinating people the Darlingtons have met - a story of an adventurous life well lived.

Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier

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Praise for Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier

Big-hearted, ribald and rambunctious fun

Big-hearted, ribald and rambunctious fun

Full of humour...I wholeheartedly recommend this gentle tale of two pensioners and their adventures as it's great fun

Big-hearted, ribald and rambunctious fun

Big-hearted, ribald and rambunctious fun

Full of humour...I wholeheartedly recommend this gentle tale of two pensioners and their adventures as it's great fun

Big-hearted, ribald and rambunctious fun

Big-hearted, ribald and rambunctious fun

Full of humour...I wholeheartedly recommend this gentle tale of two pensioners and their adventures as it's great fun

Books by Terry Darlington

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