Book review: Writer explores England by kayak

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As British writer David Aaronovitch points out in the introduction to his 2000 travel book/memoir, Paddling to Jerusalem, in the last few years writers have walked around England under the guise of just about every gimmick imaginable.

From south to north, around the coast, up the middle, round the sides, in wheelchairs, on one leg, carrying heavy electrical goods, with no money, with a dog, with a horse, in the company of Ian Botham, each walk slightly more improbable than the last.

He concedes that walking is the right pace for seeing the true England: “It is a micro-country, where everything is in the detail, and any speed of more than 5 mph means that most of what England has to offer must be missed.”

However, instead of walking, Aaronovitch chooses a similarly slow method of transport when he sets out to travel from London to the north of England in the summer of 1999. He decides to go by kayak.

(And just in case you’re curious: the title Paddling to Jerusalem comes from a William Blake poem, “And did those feet in ancient time,” and the patriotic hymn “Jerusalem” it inspired, both of which retell an apocryphal tale of Jesus visiting England.)

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