Six Canoe To France

By Stenton Garvald

Eric and Roy were already looking forward to their holiday, and that was before the adventure even started - an adventure with pirates, smugglers, onions and most importantly new friends. The sort of new friends who didn't mind about Roy ...
Hoorah!

Jack had been canoeing with the school in the Lake District, but there hadn't been any waves like this.
The biggest danger on Windermere was people skimming stones from the shore. One of the boys in his dormitory, Titch McEwan, had been hit on the head by an eight-bouncer and knocked unconscious. He had flipped over and drowned before anyone had a chance to reach him.
The rest of that year there had been an empty bed in the dorm.
Empty, that is, except for Titch's favourite toy on the pillow - a penguin called Red Rum.
A curious and surreal romp through the world of six deluded and at times borderline psychotic children - welcome to the world of The Splendid Six.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asquith Publishing
• Release date: Nov 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909420182

Book preview

Stenton Garvald

SIX CANOE TO FRANCE

The First Adventure of the Splendid Six

SIX CANOE TO FRANCE

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-1-909420-18-2

Copyright 2013 Stenton Garvald.

All rights reserved.

Published by Asquith Publishing

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book, then please purchase additional copies. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the efforts of the author.

Table of Contents

Chapter One – Two

Chapter Two – Four

Chapter Three – Six

Chapter Four – The Adventure Begins

Chapter Five – Smugglers!

Chapter Six – At The Lighthouse

Chapter Seven – The High Seas

Chapter Eight – Pirates

Chapter Nine – Foreign Climes

Chapter Ten – Ahoy There!

Chapter One - Two

The summer holidays promised to be especially good this year. Father and Mother had rented a cottage on the south coast for two weeks, right beside the beach. Roy would be coming too, of course, so there would be plenty to do.

For weeks before they were due to leave, Eric looked forward to the holiday more and more. He packed all his favourite toys and books into a suitcase, until Mother told him that he had to leave room for clothes as well.

After that, he spent a lot of time talking with Roy about what they were going to do. It was simply ages since they had been to a beach together: years and years, in fact. For the last few summers they had been going on holiday to places without beaches: places with mountains, or animals, or vineyards instead.

Eric’s father didn’t think much of modern schools, and so Eric didn’t go to one. Instead, three tutors came round at different times during the week and taught him on his own. Because of this Eric didn’t really need to take his summer holidays at the same time as the schools, but he usually did anyway. For one thing, Eric’s father (who worked in a top secret research establishment) had to take his holidays at a certain time each year, which was during the school holidays. As well as that, on the two or three occasions when they had tried to go on holiday at a different time, they had discovered that everything was closed.

So Eric had learned to put up with meeting lots of other children. Sometimes he didn’t mind that, but a lot of the time they seemed rather slow.

They were to take a train down to the coast together, which Eric thought was going to be very exciting until he discovered that it didn’t have a funnel of any sort. It was a quiet electric thing, without a separate engine. Eric’s father was always telling him that he should take up a proper hobby, like train spotting: Eric had thought that he might take up train spotting this year. Now he wasn’t at all sure – especially if this was going to be the first one.

The carriage was quite busy, and for a while Eric was worried that someone might sit on Roy: people did sometimes, which he thought was awfully rude. But at last they got underway and nobody sat on Roy at all.

~ ~ ~

The cottage was white and lay about a mile to the west of the town, just before the cliffs started. The front rooms overlooked the beach and the sea. There was a little old lady in the cottage next door, who gave them the keys. She promised that she would come in to clean every day and said Aaar, m’dear, to all the questions they asked her.

There were a few minutes when Eric was afraid she was going to offer them some of her home cooking. He remembered the home cooking which they had tried last year in the Loire Valley – most of it seemed to have lots of hard bits inside; all the fruit had pips or stones; and everything he had eaten had made him sick. This holiday he was determined, as far as was possible, to live on biscuits and lemonade.

He was to share a bedroom with Roy, upstairs overlooking the sea. Mother and Father would have the back bedroom, which was larger but didn’t have such a good view. He rushed up the stairs, threw his suitcase on the bed and started unpacking. He put all his clothes in the wardrobe; and his books in the little cabinet beside the bed; and he scattered his toys across the floor, just like they were at home.

All that first night he sat by the window with Roy, and they looked out at the lights on the water: fishing boats probably. There was a lighthouse at the top of the cliffs as well. Eric couldn’t see it from the window, but he could see its white beam shining out across the Channel.

~ ~ ~

‘Whatever shall we do today?’ Eric asked Roy, as they ate breakfast.

‘It’s a jolly fine day,’ Roy said: he had been out early for a walk around. ‘I think we should have a look at those cliffs.’

‘Good show!’ Eric agreed.

So after breakfast they went down to the beach together, and walked along to where the sand became rocks and the land rose higher and higher away from them. Soon they were walking along the foot of the cliffs, about half-way to the lighthouse, which stood right at the very tip of the headland.

‘I wonder if there are caves,’ Eric said, looking about at the cliff.

‘There should be,’ Roy told him.

‘Why?’ Eric asked. A lot of cliffs didn’t have any caves at all.

‘These cliffs are made from limestone,’ Roy explained. ‘Typical karst erosion, coupled with the action of the waves, should have produced some excellent caves.’

‘Is that one?’ Eric pointed to a dark shadow, a little distance away.

They clambered over, and found that the shadow was the entrance to a shallow cave. Eric climbed inside, and Roy followed him.

‘This isn’t a very good cave,’ Roy said, looking around.

‘No,’ Eric agreed. It didn’t go back very far, and the floor was all slippery and covered in seaweed. ‘The view’s rather good, though.’ Through the entrance to the cave, they could see the waves washing against the rocks nearby.

They went back outside and carried on along