‘Tim and I both understood we had done something actually stupid. We’d underestimated the risk involved in going out to sea. We’d no radio, compass, life raft or flares. In other words, we were a couple of idiots.’

This is actually the story of Shane and Timothy Spall and their Dutch barge The Princess Matilda. After a summer for the Thames they leave to ocean with only a road atlas and a vast quantity of ignorance – and it is absolutely terrifying!

On their travels, memories are triggered of about The Voyages of the Princess Matilda childhood trips to the seaside, but also of newer times. Ten years before, Tim had been diagnosed with acute leukaemia and was given only days to live.

Surprised at how life can easily complete you by they made a decision that whenever, and if, Tim improved, they would buy a boat.

As Tim and Shane explore the coast through the Medway to Cornwall, ultimately they begin to wonder, could they help to make it out of Britain altogether? Could Matilda make it to … Wales?!

Taking over five years, The Voyages of The Princess Matilda is usually a minor epic,charting a very personal, shifting and uplifting tale of an everyday couple’s adventure around their much loved homeland.