After weeks of sailing and suspense, ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ explodes into action on October 25. At last we discover what the ‘Riddle’ is. Sadly, as you will hear, Lloyd notDavies and Tim notCarruthers fall out quite badly – and loudly – about the basic credibility of Erskine Childers’s premise in describing the imminentContinue reading “The 25th Adventure Club Podcast: Dornum, Disguises, Ditches & Duck Soup”
Tag Archives: east frisians
The 24th Adventure Club Podcast: Esens, Canals & Submarines
Finally, on October 24, with only two days to go in the book, we get to discuss the actual riddle of ‘The Riddle of the Sands’. Lloyd notDavies uses his train timetables to get us to Esens. Minus a moustache, Tim notCarruthers points out the cultural highlights of this ancient Frisian town. And then bothContinue reading “The 24th Adventure Club Podcast: Esens, Canals & Submarines”
Blindfold to Memmert
To my mind, October 22 is the greatest and most memorable day in ‘The Riddle of the Sands’. It’s the day Carruthers and Davies row a dinghy in thick fog, all way from Norderney to Memmert and back again. It’s atmospheric, full of tension & jeopardy, and describes an extraordinary act of derring-do with theContinue reading “Blindfold to Memmert”
The 22nd Adventure Club Podcast: Rowing to Memmert & Dinner Afterwards
We’re now at the most important moment of the book, and the section that could be claimed to have secured the reputation of ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ as one of the greatest British adventure novels of all time. It’s the row to the island of Memmert in a thick fog on October 22: aContinue reading “The 22nd Adventure Club Podcast: Rowing to Memmert & Dinner Afterwards”
‘the tide had risen a good deal’ – NO IT HADN’T
Club members who have been paying close attention will remember that on October 16 in the book, Carruthers makes a note that “High water at morning and evening is between five and six”. He and Davies are somewhere between Wangerooge and Spiekeroog at the time, and he even adds a short footnote stating: “the reader shouldContinue reading “‘the tide had risen a good deal’ – NO IT HADN’T”
‘an anchorage behind Baltrum’
Wangerooge, Spiekeroog, Langeoog… one by one, we’re crossing the East Frisian islands off our list – or rather adding them to our charts. And now, on October 20, we drop anchor just off Baltrum. Baltrum is a lot smaller than the other islands we’ve encountered, but has many of the same characteristics of its largerContinue reading “‘an anchorage behind Baltrum’”
‘coffee and Kümmel at a table in a dingy inn-parlour’
I think we drank the wrong Kümmel. And really, we should have been drinking tea, not coffee. Apart from that, I think the podcast about October 19 went quite well… Why the wrong Kümmel? Well, I went for Wolfschmidt, mainly because it tickled me to think we were drinking the same ‘putting mixture’ that Scottish golfers apparentlyContinue reading “‘coffee and Kümmel at a table in a dingy inn-parlour’”
‘the scene from the offing was desolate to the last degree’
Charting the Harle, as Carruthers & Davies claim to be doing on October 16, was probably a rather pointless exercise back in 1898. As already noted by Lloyd (not Davies) in a previous post, the sands in these parts are constantly shifting, and the channels would be changing pretty regularly as a result. Nowhere isContinue reading “‘the scene from the offing was desolate to the last degree’”
The 16th Adventure Club Podcast: Spiekeroog, snipes & the Maxim machine gun
The entry in Carruthers’s log book for October 16 makes mention of: a survey of the Muschel Balge between Wangerooge and Spiekeroog; a spot of hunting for jack snipe; encounters with both the galliot Kormoran and the torpedo gunboat Blitz – the latter armed with four ‘Maxims’. Lots for us to get our teeth intoContinue reading “The 16th Adventure Club Podcast: Spiekeroog, snipes & the Maxim machine gun”
‘siel–a repulsive termination, that seemed appropriate to the whole region’
As Lloyd (notDavies) points out vividly in his post about Wangeroog, the sea and the land are constantly at war in this part of the world. When it comes to the islands of East Frisia first encountered by our heroes on October 15, it’s not that clear who’s winning. But on the mainland, I’d say the land isContinue reading “‘siel–a repulsive termination, that seemed appropriate to the whole region’”
The Curiously Specific Book Club 