Narrow Dog to Carcassonne | 
 enlarge | Author: Terry Darlington
Creator: Steve Hodson
Publisher: ISIS Audio Books
Category: Book
Buy New: $76.95
New (4) from $76.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 4702847
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Number Of Items: 9
Pages: 0
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.8 x 2.4
ISBN: 0753135620
EAN: 9780753135624
ASIN: 0753135620
Publication Date: August 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
"We could bore ourselves to death, drink ourselves to death, or have a bit of an adventure..." It was absurd. It was foolhardy. And it was glorious. When they retired, Terry Darlington and his somewhat saner wife Monica—together with their dog, a whippet named Jim—chucked their earthbound life and set out in an utterly unseaworthy sixty-foot canal narrowboat across the notoriously treacherous English Channel and down to the South of France.
Aboard the Phyllis May, you’ll dive through six-foot waves in the Channel and be swept down the terrible Rhône. You’ll meet the French nobody meets—poets, captains, scholars, madmen; they all want to know the couple on the painted boat and their narrow dog. You’ll visit the France nobody knows—the backwaters of Flanders, the canals beneath Paris, and the forbidden routes to the wine-dark Mediterranean Sea. Aliens, trolls, gongoozlers, killer fish, and the walking dead all stand between our two-person, one-whippet crew and their goal: the ancient, many-towered city of Carcassonne.
A tale of travel, travail, dubious wine, a balky pump, and a boat built for only a few feet of water, this exuberantly inventive and hugely entertaining odyssey of the spirit, senses, and heart will enchant lovers of France, England, and all that lies between.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 This is a very good book! August 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read a lot of travel books and especially a lot of books about travel or living in France. This is, hands-down, one of the top 3 I've ever read, and I can't remember what the other two are! This is funny! It's honest. It's sometimes exciting. The writing is much better than that of most travel tales, by far!
Mr. Darlington is a poet, and he's obviously had that wonderful sort of British education that sends one off into life with a head full of poetry as well as facts. This book is sometimes a poem, without a spare word. He makes his adventures come alive. He makes us want to be friends with him and his wife, Monica, and even with Jim the "narrow dog."
I am really looking forward to the publication next year of his book about traveling the the southern U.S. Mr. Darlington, I hope you keep writing for a long time!
Narrow dog...wide fun July 16, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I must admit that I have been to the UK and have been on a narrow boat. This book is hilarious, warm, endearing and I cannot wait to get the new book. Anyone who has ever traveled, either with a dog or children to someplace completely unfamiliar will appreciate the author's experiences. If you have been on one of the uniquely British narrowboats you are even more enraptured with the book. If you have been on a motorhome for a long trip, especially with children, you will appreciate Jim (the narrow dog). I must admit that Americans will have trouble with some of the English usage but it is well worth it. Wonderful book, wonderful story, wonderful people.
WH
"Narrow dog"was terrific! July 14, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
We've driven a barge to Carcassonne and the auther captures the experience. However, it was his sense if humor that kept us helpless.
enjoy narrowdog June 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you like travel and/or boats and/or dogs and/or a writer with humor and quotes from classics to films, this book will be right up your...canal. Funny and disarming, showing the downside moments as well as the champagne highs of taking a narrowboat across the Channel and, even more scaringly, down through France, not a dull page in the lot.
I can't wait to see what happens when Terry and Monica and Jim the Narrow Dog come to my home country in the US.
I read it in two sittings.
BarbV
 Boring June 4, 2008
I didn't care for the book much. There were bits and pieces that were humourous, but overall, I didn't find it all that funny. That was disappointing, because I think the author can be quite humorous.
I think, as others have mentioned, Darlington was trying too hard to show how erudite he was by including as many references to songs, books, quotes, poetry, etc. as he could. I'm well read and well traveled, but I didn't know what he was talking about half of the time.
And even though this was about a boat trip, if I had to read one more ad nuasuem description of the locks they passed through, I would have screamed. Enough already!
One more thing-it drove me CRAZY that there were absolutely no quotation marks in the book-made it very hard to read.
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