Moderate Becoming Good Later: One man’s attempt to kayak the Shipping Forecast to escape his grief

In 2010, architect Toby Carr suddenly lost his father.  Around this time, Toby was also diagnosed with cancer—something his brother Marcus had long been grappling with. Both were born with a rare genetic condition called Fanconi anaemia, which affects one in two million people. In 2017, Marcus died in a hospice in London.

It was after losing his father (his mother Bron had long been in a home after suffering a viral brain injury when Toby was six years old) and cancer diagnosis that Toby took up kayaking on the ‘murky waters of the Thames’ with Tower Hamlets Canoe Club. After Marcus’s death, he decided he needed a big adventure to process his grief and his own condition. Enter: The idea of sea kayaking the locations of the Shipping Forecast.

Produced by the Met Office and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, these weather and sea reports are considered by some people to be the UK’s ‘national lullaby’—the soothing delivery of seemingly unknown faraway places alternating with weather status of the seas around Britain and in parts of Europe.

With a Churchill Fellowship grant, Toby covered many of Shipping Forecast’s 31 sea areas, from South East Iceland through the Faroe Islands, Norway, Germany, Spain and the UK. In that time, he left his job in London and took up a lecturer position at Cornwall’s Falmouth University. However, on January 10, 2022, Toby died of liver cancer, before he could write his book.

Determined to tell her brother’s story, his sister Katie decided to interpret his notes, recording and photos and write the book. A year later, the end result is Moderate Becoming Good Later by Toby and Katie Carr.

Adventure.com caught up with Katie to talk about the book, her late brother, and the power of nature and adventures to help us process grief.

Meera Dattani: I’m a big Radio 4 fan, thanks to my dad, and as a night owl, I hear the late-night Shipping Forecast a few times a week. Kayaking those sea areas is an interesting approach to an adventure.

Katie Carr: I remember Toby saying to me, “I’ve been wanting to do a challenge.” He had friends who’d done things like kayak around Britain or Ireland, and after Marcus’s death, he was definitely angling for an adventure and I knew that.

When he mentioned shipping forecast locations, it just made sense. The forecast was part of our childhood as we had this small boat and we’d go sailing off the east coast of England and listen to it properly, to understand the weather. And my dad would have Radio 4 on in the background so we grew up listening to everything.

“Something important to remember about adventure is we sometimes think of it with a ‘capital A’—you know, I’ve got to be wild camping or running up a mountain. But there’s lots of ways we can adventure.”

It’s very moving reading this book, because we know how it ends, but aren’t quite sure how it will happen. How was the process of reading Toby’s notes, recordings and blogs for you?

It was hard in the beginning because it was emotional to listen to his voice recordings and hold his notebooks that still smelt of him. He’d made detailed notes but then it’d jump about, sometimes no dates, but then I got used to how he’d ordered it.

The other challenge was the amount of information. Voice recordings on his phone, video recordings on a drive, photos on his waterproof camera and phone—the geolocations of phone photos helped me—plus notes, blogs, social media posts.

I was also lucky that I knew the code for his phone. He told me it once so I could access Netflix and it’s lucky that I remembered it. It gave me access to so much more—screenshots of the weather forecast, and especially when he was kayaking in Cornwall when the winds were way out of anyone’s comfort zone.

How did you find the actual writing process?

I say at the end of the book that this isn’t the book Toby would have written because I don’t know exactly what he would have chosen.

Toby and I spoke a lot but even towards the end, he never asked me to write the book for him. I kind-of wish we’d had that conversation, so I could have said, “Look, I’ll do it.” I know he would have gone, “Oh Katie, you’ve got enough on your plate with kids, work and stuff. You don’t need to do that,” but writing the book was something I could do for him—when there’s not a lot else you can do.

I knew he wanted to tell his story in some way as his descriptions were so detailed and absorbing. He’d had some advice from the head of communication at the Churchill Foundation who was a travel writer, too. He’d told him to write down everything, even if you think you’re going to remember it later and to take lots of photos. I think we all believe we’re going to remember more than we do.

You’re now aiming to kayak to the land areas of the Shipping Forecast that Toby didn’t get a chance to visit. How is that going?

Yes, it’s happening. I first kayaked in the sea in January of this year when my aunt Nicky came to the Costa Brava when it was a year since Toby had died. I’ve been out a few times since and done some training at a kayak school. On the trips, I’m kayaking with properly qualified leaders—I think that’s important when you think about adventure. Let’s keep it safe, let’s not try and die while doing it.

There were several areas Toby never kayaked in, others he did but didn’t write about, and Lundy which he left half-finished. If I take away areas with no land—because that’s way too dangerous and silly to go there in a sea kayak—there are 10 areas I’m working on completing in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and northeast England.

Toby writes in the book: “If you’re an adventurer, what happens when you go back to real life? Do you return to your day job, bitter that you can’t make a living out of what you want to do? Or can you infuse your life with your adventuring ways?” What have you taken from Toby’s mindset to incorporate adventure into daily life?

I’ve been thinking of how we can include adventure in day-to-day life. I used to go on loads of adventures—I was lucky enough to work abroad a lot and would get a weekend to myself in Costa Rica and walk up a volcano. It’s different now with children but something important to remember about adventure is we sometimes think of it with a capital A— I’ve got to be wild camping or running up a mountain. There are lots of ways we can adventure.

“Writing the book was like spending an extra year with Toby. In the beginning, it felt like torture, but as I got into this detective work of deciphering his notes, it was lovely to go into that detail.”

And as Toby said, it’s a mindset, and thinking, “OK, these are my limitations. I have a weekend or I have a morning. What can I do with it?” Even with Toby, he wanted to complete his challenge, but it was primarily about enjoying the journey. That may sound like a cliché, but that’s why I felt it was fine to write a book about an unfinished adventure, and why the publishers did, too—he didn’t complete his challenge, but that’s OK.

How has this experience helped you process your own grief?

Writing the book was like spending an extra year with Toby. In the beginning, it felt like torture, but as I got into this detective work of deciphering his notes and understanding his trip, it was lovely to go into that detail—what he did, who he met, where he ended up. I had very young children when he started his adventure. When he left in 2018 I had a one-year-old and in 2019, I had my second son. Even though I was following him on Instagram, I wasn’t on top of everything that he was doing.

I remember when I first sea-kayaked and looked at the horizon—a view I’d seen so many times in Toby’s photos, but one I’d never had myself—I found my eyes misting up and thought, this is how Toby spent a lot of time.

It’s also about defining what adventure is for you. I look at myself taking over Toby’s adventure—I’m not a good kayaker, I’ve got a family, I’m older, I live in a different country so my approach and experience will be different.

That’s also something I’ve had issues with because I didn’t want to do a ‘crap version’ of my brother’s adventure, but at the same time, I thought, there are lots of people who would benefit from having an approach to life that is more adventurous, that isn’t necessarily the ‘capital A’ adventure—it’s about doing stuff, in whatever way you can. I think a lot of people stop themselves before they start.

The link between nature, the outdoors and mental health is also something the book gently touches on. How does that resonate for you?

Yes. When you’re out on the sea—and this is something Toby says in the book—you can’t be moping around. You’ve got to be focused and that connection is really helpful not just for grief, but for many things. In the book, he says: “We all have challenges in our lives, but what’s important is how we deal with these challenges—seeing the positives rather than the negative… I hope that I can inspire other people to spend time outdoors in nature, to rebalance their lives.”

I was thinking recently about how I can get stressed out with things like AI, what’s real, what’s not real, but nature is so real. It forces you to be in the moment. If you’re on a small boat, you’re also dealing with the elements so you can’t be distracted for too long. Even the act of recording your experience make you ‘present’—I’ve always thought that drawing or describing a scene is like meditation because you have to concentrate on exactly what is there.

For me, the book is also about getting more people involved in adventure. Toby’s adventure wasn’t just one man and his kayak, as you know—it was about this connection between people and nature too. Now, friends and friends of friends of his get involved and ask if they can join me on a paddle. I’m like, “Yeah, brilliant. Just come along.”

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Moderate Becoming Good Later by Toby and Katie Carr is published by Summersdale on 8 June 2023.

You can find out more about the book and related events at katieannicecarr.com and follow on Twitter and Instagram.

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