Sailing Pickle round Great Britain: with family, friends and bees in my bonnet

A circumnavigation of Great Britain with one wife, five children, and twenty-two friends as crew.

In 2012, retired NHS doctor and university professor Charles Warlow recruited his nearest, dearest, and most adventuresome of friends to join him on his sailing boat Pickle for a voyage around Great Britain. Setting off anti-clockwise from Ardfern in Argyll, Scotland, the skipper and his ever-changing set of helpers completed the 2540-mile cruise in eight two-week legs. They stopped off at 85 places around the coastline - some stunningly beautiful, others less attractive, some historic, others modern, some urban, others wild, but every one interesting in its own way.

Interwoven with reflections on his upbringing and medical training, and on his distinguished career in medicine and academia, Warlow offers his thoughts on cruising and life on land from his perspective of being at sea. From engine failure off Bardsey Sound to a surprising sunfish in a Scottish loch, and from a crew member who suddenly couldn’t swallow off Dartmouth to a record number of family vomits off the west coast of Orkney, this is a captivating account of a circumnavigation of the island of Great Britain.

With his keen interest in the geography, history, and character of the British coastline, and acknowledging previous accounts of circumnavigations, Sailing Pickle round Great Britain is as much an insight into the background and beliefs of the skipper as it is the story of his cruise.