Moderate Becoming Good Later: Sea Kayaking the Shipping Forecast

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The person disappears or fades away and it’s not very nice when they were such a strong personality.

I feel terrible for not enjoying this book as much as I wish I had. The author didn't have the chance to finish it and his sister was kind enough to do it for him. But unfortunately, it felt incredibly rushed. We’d been to see our uncle and aunt in Jersey after our dad died in 2010,” said Toby’s sister, Katie. Moderate or good, occasionally poor and very poor in northwest. Occasional light or moderate icing for a time in northwest near ice edge, with temperatures of ms02 to ms04. The sort of adventure I've often dreamed of late at night, with additional layers of poignancy and love.' - Alastair Humphreys, adventurer and authorSoutherly or southeasterly 3 to 5, veering southwesterly 4 to 6 later, occasionally 7 in north later. Toby moved to Cornwall on his return to the UK and in the summer of 2020 completed the Cornish legs before intending to finish the job the following year. Toby's book also centres on the people he met, like these fellow kayakers on the Isle of Wight

Sadly, Toby died on the 10th of January 2022; his last time in a sea kayak had been less than two weeks earlier, in Flushing, the village which had become home.

Summary

It’s a storybook really. It paints scenes and hopefully takes people and their imagination out to these wild places. While returning to work as an architect that winter he completed more UK areas, and then in 2019 he paddled around off the coastlines of France and Spain to Porto, covering the latter 720km leg in around three weeks.

The easiest chapter for me to write, although it doesn’t sound like it, is the chapter when Toby gets ill. While Toby made it to 17 areas in the forecast and even had plans to get to the non-coastal areas covered by the forecast, ultimately his health prevented him reaching all 31. After Marcus had died in 2017 Toby had begun angling for an adventure and so started building up his kayaking skills in preparation of the big paddle, and motored through many of the 31 areas in the early days. 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. 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. - Tim Hannigan, travel, nature and history writer Toby was always more interested in the UK and northern places, like Scandinavia, and he started to realise you don't need to spent 1k to fly to Costa Rica," Katie said.

This item contains adult content

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. On a journey that took him to the harshest and most tranquil stretches of our sea, Toby found the real people, places and stories behind the familiar names and imagined environments of the well-loved BBC broadcast. So when his brother, Marcus, who had the same condition, died in 2015, Toby decided to embark on a journey. That’s a bit of a challenge because I wasn’t a sea kayaker, I live in Barcelona, I’ve got two small kids and I’m 10 years older than Toby was when he started his trip. You can almost taste the sea air reading Moderate Becoming Good Later. This incredibly moving story weaves together one family's story and shows the sense of hope and love that can be found through adventure even when things don't go according to plan. It's a privilege to be allowed a glimpse into life offshore Britain through Toby and Katie's words. * Elise Downing, adventurer and author of Coasting *