At seventy-five, Terry and Monica Darlington had completed everything they could think of doing, including starting a company and becoming athletes and running a literary society.Recently that they had become boating adventurers and Terry a bestselling writer.

However in their Midlands canal town in November, lifestyle was looking dull and short on surprises.

After that their famous canal sail boat was destroyed by fire. In a few days that they had bought a fresh one and shortly going north in the Phyllis May 2 – to Liverpool, Lancaster, the Pennines and Wigan Pier. Terry recorded the journey, and alongside it the storyplot of his lifestyle and his relationship and his pup Jim, with his broken ear such as a flat cover, and Monica’s pet Jess, known with heartbreaking cause as the Soaring Catastrophe.

Crazy, affecting and beautifully told, this is a story that brims with incident and excitement, and is filled with the famous and fascinating people the Darlingtons possess met. And there is sadness too obviously – it’s the true story of the adventurous lifestyle well lived.