Trail into past finds early days of leisure boating
A YOUNGISH lady, Charlie, decides she is feeling trapped in everything that’s going on in her world, so takes off on an adult’s gap year.
Her escape is unfortunately cut short by her mother becoming ill, but Charlie doesn’t quite make it back in time before her mother passes away.
So starts a tale of family life, what to do with father and can she help sort out her older sister’s life? Charlie’s legacy from her mother means she gets a handy place to live, a narrowboat. But nobody in the family, including her father, even knew her mother had a narrowboat.
How, why, when, where did all this happen? A steep learning curve about boating and a trail into her mother’s past leads a long way back into the early days of leisure boating. Travelling by boat, meeting up with mum’s old friends, helps answer some of the questions.
Still a stressful time for a lot of people; including Charlie, whose navigation skills seem to have gone a bit awry at one point, when she thought she was travelling up locks but on that bit of the Trent & Mersey she would really be going down. Hey, we’ve all done that at times when we’re tired!
It’s a lovely gentle read, with chapters that encourage you to turn the pages quickly to find out how Charlie’s getting on.
Did she sort out all the issues, answer all the questions?
Hmm... I reckon that quiet character Bob needs investigating further, as does Elizabeth.
I’m already looking forward to the sequel.