If Swallows and Amazons is the childhood classic to remember, Coot Club is its equal. We first encounter Dick and Dot in the book that comes before it when they are with the Swallows and the Amazons up in the northern lakes. In this story they holiday on the Norfolk Broads and we encounter the Coot Club.

I will always love the original story in this series but this is a story with more action and danger, and dare I say it, plot. When the Hullaballoos park their motor cruiser over the No. 7 nest of the Coot Club, Tom Dudgeon is forced to take matters into his own hands and casts the cruiser adrift so that the mother coot can return to her nest. As Tom evades the Hullaballoos he teaches Dick and Dot how to sail, with the help of fellow Coot Club members, the twins, Port and Starboard.

If characters ever needed a follow up story it is Port and Starboard. Whilst Dick, Dot, Tom and the Death and Glories get to have more adventures on The Broads in The Big Six, sadly this Port and Starboard’s only story.

When I originally read the Swallows and Amazons series it was not in chronological order so I am uncertain as to when I read this book. Being a Lowestoft boy (bred not born), I think this book already existed in the family library.

It stands alone from the rest of the cannon because it is truly neither a S&A book and nor a Coots one. It is Peter Duck’s tale, invented by the Swallows and the Amazons during a winter holiday. It is obviously a fictious story, whilst the other invented tale, Missie Lee reads like it is a true story.

I don’t remember much about my first reading of this book except that I was decidedly non-plussed by it. This time round though, I enjoyed it much more, particularly revelling in the descriptions of Lowestoft and the Suffolk coast I know so well. I did still find a jarring disconnect with it, in the speed at which they travelled. The adventurers seemed to reach Crab Island in the Carribean a bit too quickly and easily for a sailing vessel.

I remember reading this as a child and loving it even more than the original Swallows and Amazons, maybe because it was even more Titty’s story than the first. When John’s recklassness leads to the sinking of Swallow, it is Titty who finds the valley they call Swallowdale, and the stories of Peter Duck – the sailor that they made up over last Christmas but who we won’t meet until the next book – and Titty who makes the holiday that they had originally planned so meticulously even more exciting and enjoyable than they could have planned.

This story has adventure, shipwrecks, mountain climbing, epic trails, charcoal burners (again), dastardly great-aunts, secret caves, and of course sailing in the Lake District. And yes, we still get pales of milk, fresh eggs, shark meat (perch), bun loaf, and (indestructable) seed cake.