Narrow Dog to Carcassonne

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 the South of France.

Aboard the Phyllis May, you'll dive through six-foot waves in the Channel and be swept down the terrible Rhone. 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 exuberant and hugely entertaining true-life odyssey of the spirit, senses, and heart will enchant lovers of France, England, and all that lies between.