87 books like Pub Paddles

This is the third and final part of the author's trilogy on the East Anglian coastline, covering Essex, the previous two featuring Norfolk and Suffolk.

With her background in sailing, it is not so much a gazetteer as a wonderful medley of all things nautical as she goes off at a tangent time after time to fill in colour on the Essex coast, accompanied by her sketches and sketch maps.

Here are geology with the inundation of what has become the North Sea, human evolution, the Cinque Ports, the Hudson Bay Company, pocket submarines, sailing boat types, salt production, smuggling, Samuel Pepys, the Battle of Maldon, Anglo Saxons, oysters and other seafood, classic yacht racing, the Beagle, monsters, mermaids, the Great Lakes and much more.

Faced with publishing debts after their boys' adventure magazine failed, two young men, the author, and James Adams, undertook a kayak expedition in the mid-1930s up the Scottish west coast from the Clyde to Mull, raising funds by selling reports to the press.

They learned much of the remote and deprived Highland economy, which stood the author in good stead later, editing the Daily Record and The Scotsman.

A long trip, including helping to take in the harvest in the autumn, it involved canvas kayaks, kilts, and buying provisions from farms, much more onerous than kit for present-day expeditions.

Originally published as Quest by Canoe, this version includes significant extra material, including press cuttings.

In 1983 the 47-year-old fell runner Joss Naylor set a record of 19 hours 14 minutes for touching all 27 relevant lakes in the Lake District.

His astonishing time for this 169km run still stands. This was not on the flat, of course, but often over rough country, involving over 6km of vertical height gain.

He had to prepare his support team, find his own route and have witnesses at each lake in the days before mobile phones or satnav. The author walked the route in 2020 with a photographer and Joss in 10 days, still not hanging about for a man in his 80s.

Joss chose to donate his royalties for this inspirational book to the Brathay Trust, which helps the disadvantaged, match funded by publishers Cicerone.

This autobiography opens looking from the start line at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

A long book with a lot of detail, the pace hardly seems to drop. The author used some unconventional methods in his training, including on the sea, not usual for a sprint kayak racer.

This was on the Ayrshire coast when the M6 was still under construction and regular national squad training weekends were never north of Birmingham. Back home with his family, he also ran a local training group.

The title has a double meaning as he began manufacturing the world-renowned Lendal paddles, with further travel issues. The innovations had to be perfect, again with original thinking.

He produced the world's first GRP shafts and split paddles and handled issues of composite blades, cranks, aerofoils, and curved shafts.

This is a book that says 'can do' and does all the way through.

Johnson’s debut novel, longlisted for the Man Booker, takes place in a half-dreamlike state, exploring the complexities of a mother, daughter relationship. The writing is so visceral and exquisite, there were certain sentences I lingered over for hours. Her descriptions and linking of the characters with the natural world, while firmly rooted in reality are mythological and otherworldly at the same time. Astounding debut. 

Anthony Burton is a great authority on the British canals and this book shows the delight of his travels along these waterways.  

I use this book to research the history of the English canals and often find new facts that broaden my understanding of the engineering skills required in their construction. The text is enlivened by all manner of illustrations, including many from the author’s own camera and old photographs of life on canals in their heyday.

The bright colours of canal boats and the details of equipment are clearly displayed. Like the other books of my choice, it evokes the sense of steady slow progress that was travel along the “navigations” and provides relief from the hastiness of modern life.

James Brindley built the core elements of Britain’s canal system, which halved the coal price in several industrial cities.

He began as the son of an impoverished rural farmer, then apprenticed to a millwright, before setting up as a craftsman-engineer. Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Gower hired him to survey a potential Trent and Mersey Canal, before introducing him to his brother-in-law Samuel Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater who wanted to connect his Worsley coal mines to Manchester.

Corble’s book centres on the Bridgewater Canal, which Brindley surveyed, developing new “puddling” techniques to seal the bottom. Brindley then used the Bridgewater Canal as a demonstration project for his much larger “Grand Cross” canal system, connecting the Severn, Trent, Mersey, and Thames rivers.

With Gower’s help, Brindley got Parliamentary authorization, raising capital from local landowners and country banks. Brindley’s Grand Cross became a gigantic infrastructure leap forward, kick-starting the Industrial Revolution. 

This was one of my favorite books of 2021. In The Same Boat tells the story of Sadie, a fierce canoer, who must finish the Texas River Odyssey, a 260-mile canoe race. Members of her family have raced for years—and always finished. But last year, Sadie wrecked her canoe and couldn’t finish. As a result, her dad’s barely speaking to her. So, this time, she must finish. She’s set to race with her brother but at the last minute, she’s forced to canoe with her ex-best-friend-turned-worst-enemy who inconveniently has become hot. It’s a gripping read with a swoony romance and a whole lot of family heart. Green does the very hard thing of writing a feminist sporty romance where the love interest doesn’t define her athleticism. 

I love to travel and frequently wonder how I’d react if an ordinary trip suddenly turned dangerous. In this novel, I learned that survival could mean being forever haunted by the experience.

Instead of a beer swilling weekend and white-water recreation, four suburbanites endure a Homeric odyssey into malevolent American darkness. Dickey’s story chronicles more than a dangerous adventure. It is extreme. It can be so extreme it challenges the reader’s tolerance.

And that gave me a powerful lesson in storytelling: do not shy away from breaking the boundaries of readerly comfort.

Any Peter Heller novel will work here—The Dog Stars, The Painter, etc.—but The River is really interesting for a few reasons: Heller pushes his characters into the unknown on a river that serves both as a literal symbol and a propulsive, metaphorical symbol. There’s no way to backtrack on a river, so his two friends can’t go backwards. Then we add in the imminent danger of a forest fire and the creepy people also on the river with them, and the whole entire mix is scary!