Published by Williams Collins, London, England
1st Edition 2019
388 pages with maps and photos
$20.44 Hardcover (Amazon)
ISBN 978-0-00-822511-7
The author, David Gange, Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham (England), is a seeker of the past as well as a kayaking adventurer who paddled solo for a year down the west coast of the British Isles. His book is both an account of the region’s cultural history and of the sea kayaking journey itself. The route begins at the northernmost point of Scotland, follows the west coasts of the Scottish Isles of Shetland, Orkney, and the Outer Hebrides on to the west mainland coasts of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and finally to Cornwall in the southwest of England. Though the straight line distance is around 600 miles, Gange kayaked several times that distance along a meandering path in what are some some of the harshest waters of the Eastern Atlantic.
His goal was not simply to travel the distance or reach a destination. More than that, it would be, in his words, “a quest to comprehend and articulate the intense peculiarity of the places on this coastline,” and in that way he hoped to become a more “in touch” historian. The kayak was merely the vehicle for his historical explorations.
First, some historical context: Until the early 1800s, much of the culture of Britain was defined by its coastal communities and not by its inland towns and cities. West coast Gaelic and Celtic coastal communities in Britain were then more connected by trade with similar communities in, for example, France and Spain than they were with the towns and cities of inland Britain. Coastal communities were thriving and successful regions of the British Isles where dependence on the sea, on fishing, and on unique forms of coastal agriculture resulted in the development of a highly productive and successful society with a rich cultural heritage. I was astonished to read, for example, that at that time the value of land there was similar to that in London, compared to the thousandfold differential today.
As aficionados of “Outlander” know, from the early 1700s onwards “resettlement” (ethnic cleansing, in today’s parlance) of large parts of Scotland and Ireland was the government policy and the islands and coastal communities went into into steep decline. This led to to universal poverty, subsistence living, and ultimately mass migrations - principally to the Americas - from which it took more than 200 years to recover. Today many of these communities are seeing a resurgence of Gaelic and Celtic culture. David Gange in this journey by kayak wanted to experience firsthand the history of these coastal communities and understand and explain the changes that they have endured over the centuries stretching back to the Dark Ages.
The book is filled with lyrical descriptions of the coastal environment - its physical appearance, its weather, its geology, its flora and fauna, as well as it’s literature and cultural traditions. Throughout the journey, the author talks to archaeologists, ecologists, naturalists, geographers, anthropologists, artists, poets, novelists, and musicians he meets on his journey and it is their stories which enrich this book. The book is illustrated with some captivating photographs by the author and detailed maps so you can easily follow his route. A common theme throughout the book is the ever-changing effect of the sea on the physical and societal realms. As he says, “If timelessness exists anywhere on earth, it is not in sight of the sea.”
And if you’re looking for some heart-stopping descriptions of kayaking conditions, it’s all here, scattered through the book - “a wall of breakers,” “crests hitting the boat from both sides,” “the ‘sensation that I’d walked through a brine carwash,” “afraid that the huge overfalls might bury or even break the kayak!” Then finally, in the last days of the journey, relative calm until Cornwall where “the reef was less like a wall in front of the waves and more like a knife blade thrust into ocean, violence on every edge. Landing was impossible. I was forced, for the first time in my life, to overnight on the water.”
The following quotation gives you a sense of the fine literary skills of the author when he describes the habitat of the migratory bird, the petrel, which spends most of its life in or on the water, only returning to land to breed, “...petrels live lives apparently defined by air. Their acute sense of smell guides migration and directs foraging through the vaporous worlds they occupy. Yet the main ingredient of their odor map is a sulfur given off when the smallest subaqueous vegetable plankton are eaten by animal plankton. These organisms bloom at the top of seamounts, where tide-borne nutrients rise from the deep, in the same way that wind-borne moisture rises into cloud when it hits a hillside. These clouds of seamount plankton don’t just attract predation but trap carbon and therefore slow climate warming.” The book is just packed with insightful nuggets such as this.
David Gange is meticulous in providing background material: This is an academic who paddles with a dry bag full of reference books, and who writes during his journey (“six hours when I sleep, eight hours when I paddle, and the rest for thinking, reading, and writing”). Many nights are spent in a waterproof sleeping bag with no tent. His descriptions of the ocean, its swells, its currents, its streams, rival any I have read and reflect the multiplicity of water/ land interface conditions and the complexity of surface water movement in this most rugged of coastlines.
The book could also be seen as a reference book worthy, in my opinion, of any sea kayaker’s bookshelf – complete with 35 pages of notes, references, and a comprehensive index, though anyone with an interest in the cultural history of the British Isles will also treasure this book. Though intended for the general reader, the book is somewhat scholarly and if you’re looking for an easy read then this may not be for you. But if you’re a long distance kayaker with an interest in methods of cultural discovery on a coastal journey (water trails of indigenous peoples and present-day urban waterways come to mind) you’ll not find a better primer for your journey than The Frayed Atlantic Edge.
Peter Jones is the owner and principle guide at Driftwood Kayak and leads one-day and multi-day trips out of Stonington, Maine. Peter spent his childhood in Wales where he built his first kayak at his high school ´canoe club´. He is a registered Maine Guide, a former American Canoe Assoc. Instructor and a certified Wilderness First Responder. Peter and his wife, Christine, a children’s author, live in Gloucester, Mass. and Deer Isle, Maine. You can reach Peter at www.driftwoodkayak.com.
