Channel paddle

SIR – I was intrigued by your report “French turn back duo who cycled across the Channel” (August 30). Another eccentric crossing was the first in a canoe, by my great-greatuncle, James Gordon, in July 1868.

He had bought his canoe two days before in Lambeth and journeyed to Dover to start a 12-hour night-time crossing. He was enthusiastically greeted in France by the population of the small village where he had made landfall, fed, watered, given a change of clothing and a bed to rest. They could not believe he had made the crossing in such a small vessel.

He spent the next month canoeing around the rivers of France, before returning by more conventional means on a steamer from Rotterdam. He recounted all this in a short book.

I am in possession of the canoe, which I recently had restored to its former glory.

The Marquess of Aberdeen

Mains of Haddo, Aberdeenshire