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    The Pull of the River: A Journey into the Wild and Watery Heart of Britain
    Unavailable
    The Pull of the River: A Journey into the Wild and Watery Heart of Britain
    Unavailable
    The Pull of the River: A Journey into the Wild and Watery Heart of Britain
    Ebook265 pages4 hours

    The Pull of the River: A Journey into the Wild and Watery Heart of Britain

    By Matt Gaw

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Tales of escape and adventure on Britain’s waterways

    In The Pull of the River two foolhardy explorers do what we would all love to do: they turn their world upside down and seek adventure on their very own doorstep.

    In a handsome, homemade canoe, painted a joyous nautical red the colour of Mae West’s lips, Matt and his friend James delve into a watery landscape that invites us to see the world through new eyes.

    Over chalk, gravel, clay and mud; through fields, woodland, villages, towns and cities, they reveal many places that otherwise go unnoticed and perhaps unloved, finding delight in the Waveney, Stour, Alde/Ore, upper and lower Thames, Lark, Great Ouse, Granta and Cam, Wye, Otter, Colne, Severn and the Great Glen Trail.

    Showing that it is still possible to get lost while knowing exactly where you are, The Pull of the River is a beautifully written exploration of nature, place and friendship, and an ode to the great art – and joy – of adventure.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElliott & Thompson
    Release dateApr 5, 2018
    ISBN9781783963355
    Unavailable
    The Pull of the River: A Journey into the Wild and Watery Heart of Britain
    Author

    Matt Gaw

    Matt Gaw is a writer, journalist and naturalist who lives in Bury St Edmunds, and is the author of The Pull of the River: A Journey into the Wild and WateryHeart of Britain (E&T, 2017) and Under the Stars: A Journey into Light (E&T, 2020). His work has been published in the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Times. He works with Suffolk Wildlife Trust, edits Suffolk Wildlife, and currently writes a monthly country diary for the Suffolk Magazine.

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    Reviews for The Pull of the River

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      People have their lives filled with constant interruptions and phones demanding attention constantly, tearing from one place to another, we rarely take the time we need for ourselves. Mat Gaw decides that is time to discover another speed to his life and with his friend, James, seek the tranquillity of his local river in their homemade nautical red canoe, Pipe, the colour of Mae West’s lips supposedly…

      People have been drawn to rivers for millennia, not only do they hold an essential element to life, they have always had a spiritual dimension too and often now are used for all sorts of leisure activities. Travelling in a canoe on a river or canal is a silent way of moving through the town and countryside and offers a startling new perspective of the places that they thought they knew well. From their local rivers, they head to Britain's longest and best-known ones, The Thames and the Severn, further afield to the south-west on the River Otter and across Scotland's great glen.

      They get wet as you'd expect after falling in several times, get stuck in the mud, beached, bitten alive by midges, failing to see Nessie, brushing through the branches of willows, racing the rapids and have a couple of very scary moments. Sometimes they make time to talk when paddling, at other times the only sound they make is the gentle splash of the paddles as they sit in silence discovering just how much wildlife is there when you sit quietly and wait for it.

      It was a really enjoyable book, written with humour, a wry wit and a keen eye as he describes the land and waterscapes that they pass The context of the book is wider than that though, his research of the rivers uncovers those nuggets of information of the historical and cultural terrain that overlays the rivers and that makes this a much richer read as they paddle along. I also found it refreshing as Gaw brings no personal baggage to his watery voyages; it is just him and his friend taking the time to immerse themselves in the natural world, sleeping out under the stars and rediscovering a place where time moves at a very different rate to modern life; a world that few people see now days.