A boat like a salad bowl, by Laura Kemble

An original contemporary blog.

I had imagined that a coracle would be like a small rowing boat. It is more like a large salad bowl, and it behaves like one. For two days last month I joined a course on the banks of the River Teifi in west Wales, run by Emrys Rhydderch, whose family have fished the river from coracles for at least five generations.

Coracles have been used in Wales for more than two thousand years. Each one is built for its owner, so Emrys began by weighing me: the boat must carry you without sitting too low in the water. We wove a frame of split willow laths, soaked overnight so that they would bend, and bound the rim with plaited hazel. On the second morning we stretched calico over the frame and painted it with three thick coats of pitch, which made the whole shed smell like a road being mended.

Then came the river. There is only one paddle, held out in front, and you scull it in a figure of eight. My first attempt sent me spinning in slow circles, like a leaf in a gutter, while a heron watched from the far bank with what I took to be contempt. By the afternoon I could travel in something close to a straight line.

The finished coracle weighs about twelve kilograms, and I carried it back to the car on my back, upside down, like a giant beetle. It now hangs in my garage. I take it out every Sunday.

(a) For how long have coracles been used in Wales? (b) Why were the willow laths soaked overnight? (c) What does the final paragraph suggest about the writer’s feelings about coracling now?