Moderate Becoming Good Later: Sea Kayaking the Shipping Forecast

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At the beginning, in chapters Toby managed to complete before his death, he describes his upbringing, family life and reasons for taking on the challenge. Having seen the map I was amazed by the scale of his project, doing all these areas in a tiny wee boat?

No stranger to weathering a storm after living with a rare life-limiting condition and facing the death of his brother, avid kayaker Toby Carr set out to explore the areas of the Forecast. Lots to learn and some amazing places visited and it has definitely spurred me to want to see more of the world once more and live for the moment. But what really elevates this above other travellers' tales is the astonishing and moving story of the book's completion - a remarkable collaboration across the ultimate gulf.Moderate Becoming Good Later is a wonderfully salty adventure, a quixotic odyssey driven by equal parts grit and good humour around the stormy shores of western Europe. I will also admit to being drawn to the book because it was written following the death of Toby Carr - had it not been for that, I probably wouldn’t have looked at it. Throughout, Katie Carr has imbued Toby’s account with a natural charm, which combined with sublimely evocative descriptions, effortlessly transports the reader deep into the maritime environment.

The book starts off sharing family history, explaining health conditions and why he wanted to do this, a rather clever method was done to share this.Informative, humorous and emotional, it left me feeling sad but also really inspired and motivated to tackle my own adventure, what ever the size! The reason for 3 stars is I found the first and last thirds enjoyable but the middle 100 pages ish I found repetitive in their descriptions and sometimes lost where we were, how he got there, where the car suddenly appears from, even which year it is. It is all about one man who goes sea kayaking, I never imagined how I would be so captured with this story but it is so engaging and I didn't want to stop reading. The adventure continues on to the Faroe Islands, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France and Spain, he faces dangerous seas often and instead of backing down or taking risks he uses a sensible head and constantly makes the right decisions, an incredible ability to read the sea.