Published: 1 September 2010
ISBN: 9781409084969
Imprint: Transworld Digital
Format: EBook
Pages: 432

Categories:

Travel

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Painting The Darkness

Terry Darlington

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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 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.

Published: 1 September 2010
ISBN: 9781409084969
Imprint: Transworld Digital
Format: EBook
Pages: 432

Categories:

Travel

Share…

About the author

Terry Darlington

Terry Darlington was brought up in Wales in the early forties between a Sunderland Flying Boat base and some oil storage tanks, an ill-chosen location at the time. In Stone in Staffordshire he founded Research Associates - market research worldwide - now run by the next generation, who are much better at it than he was. He also founded Stone Master Marathoners, and as President he is still used for ceremonial purposes. He likes boating but knows nothing about it.

Also by Terry Darlington

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Praise for Painting The Darkness

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

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

There's kind of a moral to the tale as well.
John Inverdale and Johnny Walker, Radio 2 Drivetime

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.
Nigel Rees

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

Great fun and very well written.
Blue Flag

'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