People often say to me when they learn of my story, “But you seem so normal!” And I am normal in some way, but I am also an outsider.’ Friday 5 Feb 2021 New sea wall helping protect railway through Dawlish seven years on from devastating storm Region & Route: Wales & Western Anyone who loved The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls or Educated by Tara Westover will love this book. Its less traumatic in many ways but its a rollercoaster of a read. Anne Marie Morris, MP for Newton Abbot, commented:“This project is mission critical, not just for Dawlish but for the wider communities across the south west. The progress Network Rail has made is phenomenal and I’ve been incredibly impressed.” The quiet engulfed me after I hung up the phone. I brought my legs up on to the sofa and buried my head between my knees.

Heywood describes times of enjoyment, dangers and life threatening injuries but the mood alters as she grows older and the selfishness of her parents deprived her of the more normal upbringing she craved. That said she eschews self pity and the determination she displayed to break free and live her own life is evident although not without lasting emotional damage. Everyone scribbled on the slips, which went into Dad’s blue felt captain’s hat, a blue boat on a wooden ocean that held our future. This personal and powerful book is so great. What a journey - a hardcore one at times. I’m glad the compass has found its way home” - Bear Grylls Well,” he said, after a long pause. “I guess I have no choice. I’ll move the money into the account.”A seven-year old girl on a seventy-foot yacht, for ten years, over fifty thousand miles of sailing’ SIMON WINCHESTER A seven-year old girl on a seventy-foot yacht, for ten years, over fifty thousand miles of sailing. Wavewalker is the incredible true story of how the adventure of a lifetime became one child’s worst nightmare – and how her determination to educate herself enabled her to escape. It requires true courage to take ownership of one’s own story when others involved in the story have such a different version, especially when those others are one’s ageing parents. There are no higher stakes, and she knows it. Heywood concludes by saying, “I had no control over my life when I was a child, but as an adult I have the right to tell my story as honestly as I can.” To add to their predicament the spare compass on which they were now reliant had not been corrected for deviation. I grew up sailing around the world on a boat. My father set sail from England in 1976 on the Schooner Wavewalker with my brother, mother and me on board for what was supposed to be a three-year voyage but turned out to be a decade-long trip. While this meant that I saw a huge amount of our planet (though generally only the parts that are near sea level), it also meant that I was isolated as a child and struggled to get any formal education. Somehow, I managed to teach myself by correspondence and won a place to study at university. My book "Wavewalker" tells this story. It is both an adventure story and a coming-of-age story in a world that appeared idyllic but in reality was hugely challenging.

After a further recalculation of the schooner's position Gordon estimated that they would see the island ahead at about 5pm - it was some time after 6pm that they actually sighted the island through the falling snow. I’m not sure at what point I realised that Suzanne Heywood’s singular, troubling and remarkable memoir was not, in fact, really only about her childhood spent at sea aboard a boat called Wavewalker. Even though that story in itself is extraordinary. How many people have you ever known whose parents sat them down, aged six (Suzanne), and five (Jonathan) and told them they were leaving their lives in England to spend three years sailing around the world, retracing voyages made by Captain James Cook?

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years. I really enjoyed this book: it was a well written and easy to read account of someone who had a very different childhood but managed to survive it. A few bits of the book (like the adult Suzanne going off in search of Wavewalker) were a bit tedious: factual accounts for completeness rather than part of the main story. I slumped against the seat. Mum folded a sheet of paper into quarters, ripping it along the creases. She pushed the pieces across the table towards us. In Hawaii, the months turned into years while Dad tried various schemes to raise money, including working in a boatyard, setting up an exhibition on our trip and asking for donations. My 12th birthday came around and I gave up counting the days in my diary. I was learning nothing and was going crazy with boredom, since my parents – for reasons I never understood – had decided not to send us to school.