Downstream

before him, now he had to
come up with something new.
His daughter, Penny, recalls
him setting off from Tower
Bridge to try and break a
world record for canoe
paddling, having designed
and built ‘a sort of canoe with
broom handles for paddles’.
He began on the tide ‘one
very murky peasouper
evening’ and was nearly run
down three times in the
estuary before giving up. The