3-4 stars, no paws, ok for bedtime and travel. Warning – might make you buy a kayak and paddle off around Ireland!
I have been reading books, but fallen behind on blogging about them. I actually read this one in late August, when the weather was still pleasant and taking a kayak around Ireland seemed like a nice plan. What’s more, I bought it for my husband a little before then, and not just did he read it very quickly, he then signed us up as members of the British Canoe Union and started to organise a trial session so we would buy a second kayak (I have owned one since my student days) or possibly a double canadian canoe. The snag with this is that the trial day is going to be on Saturday and autumn has just started, with a large low pressure area settling in over the UK which is bringing lots of rain and wind for the next few days. Maybe it will have worn itself out by the weekend, but the drop in temperature is difficult to ignore at the moment. In fairness, the author himself encountered a fair bit of weather on his trip and carried on regardless, so we should probably just toughen up and hope for an end-of-season bargain. I mean, who else is going to be out on a rainy Saturday morning in late September, right?
The book, subtitled “A long way around Ireland”, describes how Jasper Winn, a relative novice to sea kayaking, decided to search for his disappearing youth and his national identity while paddling around Ireland. Still recovering from a brush with serious illness and in what would turn out to be a summer of poor weather, he set off on his own, with what little equipment he could fit into his kayak, paddling during the day and camping or staying in hostels at night. The early chapters describes his adventures both on the water, while he develops his sea legs and gains experience, and off it – the weather is so poor that there is a lot of drinking in local pubs and getting to know the regulars. He appears to be a reasonably good musician and singer, so can always join in with others. As his confidence grows, he spends more time on the water, musing about his relationship with the sea, but also with the land he is circumnavigating. While he spent a lot of his youth (and education in the school of life) in Ireland, where his possibly eccentric parents settled near a castle ruin after leaving England, he has also travelled to other countries and currently seems to struggle with deciding where home is and what it might mean to him when he finds it.
While there are hints of a midlife crisis, this is mostly a positive book about the sea, the coast and the people who live there. Jasper Winn’s story is honest, and he owns up to sometimes making the wrong, or at least a very risky, decision when setting off by kayak on stormy days. A little bit like Bill Bryson-on-sea, he brings us snapshots of the locals and the environment he encounters, but also allows us to gain in insight into his own world views and personal history. This is not a book about travel, really, or about sea kayaking, but more an opportunity to hear Jasper Winn’s tale of when he paddled around Ireland in a rainy old summer. You can almost imagine hearing about it down the pub. And while my ambition is well and truly stretched with hoping to paddle around the Kingsbridge estuary in South Devon sometime soon, it is a fine tale indeed.
rushedreader 