DOWN RIVER By Geoffrey Boumphrey
Mr. Boumphrey has written just the right sort of book for anybody wishing to make a canoe trip on the Severn and the Thames. Down River (Allen and Unwin, 4s. 6d.) tells briefly of the author's recent journey from New- town on the Severn to Pangbourne, which can be made by river and canal, with a few portages to stretch the legs. After following the Severn to Gloucester he went by the Berkeley and Stroudwater canals to the once famous Sapperton Tunnel (now an almost waterless channel) which used to join the waters of the Severn and the Thames. Thence there is a straight run down the Thames to Pangbourne. The reader is gradually initiated, in company with the author, whose first experience this was of long-distance canoeing, into the art of managing a collapsible rubber canoe. As a guide to the country Mr. Boumphrey is fairly knowledgeable, though in such brief compass he can do no more than indicate what the canoeist may expect to see, and whet his appetite to discover more for himself. There are illustra- tions, an index, but no map—an unforgivable omission in a guide-book.
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