Early in 2009, Nottinghamshire lass Sarah Henshaw wrote to her bank manager, asking for a loan of £30,000 to help set up a bookshop on a canal barge. To improve her chances, she decorated the letter with drawings of Ratty and Mole in a rowing boat.
The bank manager said no, and probably prospered. But Henshaw persevered and opened The Book Barge, in a canal of dark-brown water with the odd dead trout floating past. The new premises attracted a modest number of customers and water fowl.
Her life was dipping to a low point, personally and professionally. So Henshaw buys a FUD, and sails away, across and around a fair bit of England. In the next few months, she travels 1600km, struggles through 700-plus locks, sells 1400 books - or swaps them for places to stay or shower, and things to eat.
She met a lot of Wonderful Old Characters. There's Ted, who hung his faithless girlfriend's knickers from a church steeple. There's an adhesive author called The Acquisitor.
She talks to Hamlet's statue in Stratford; cleans her teeth in the pub on the hill; tries to moor outside the Guardian's HQ as a profile-lifting ploy (it works, and she gets six months' free herbal tea); gets stalked via texts; starts to sink in a lock. And yes, her shop does float away, more than once.
