Coracles at Emerson College

In the spring of 2006 I was inspired to lead an intrepid group of Foundation Year students to make coracles, which are basic round boats developed by the people in the British Isles and by other traditional cultures around the world. Our coracles were constructed from bent green wood we harvested on the campus of Emerson College and were covered in various recycled materials and painted with tar. While they were not all handsome looking, they were exciting to build and quite challenging to pilot. Many were highly unstable. Notice also that we made our own paddles, except for me the baker, who chose to use a pizza peel. It worked well for the figure eight draw stroke. What a satisfying project to undertake with adults or children.

These images inspired Daniel Start to include a photograph of our craft in his book, Wild Swimming.