Two bestselling authors combine their strengths in a travelogue, a search for roots, a romance and a seat-of-your-pants adventure.One sunny day in 2006, Julie and Colin Angus were talking about the future, as newly engaged couples do. More unusually, they were at the time travelling together from Moscow to Vancouver by human power boat, bike, and foot. That day, they were examining a road atlas and in particular the labyrinth of European inland waterways it revealed. Julie traced a route of interconnected canals, rivers, and coastlines that led from Colins parents homeland of Scotland past her mothers homeland, Germany, and on to her fathers, Syria. She said, half-seriously: We could row (yes, row, as in propelling a tippy little boat on a pond) all the way from Scotland to Syria to visit our relatives. It was a reckless sort of joke to make, given the couples addiction to adventure. The result is Rowed Trip, an odyssey by oar (and bike) from Caithness, Scotland, across the English Channel, through France, across the Rhine, the Main-Donau Canal to the Danube, the Black Sea, the Bosphorous Straits, and the Mediterranean. Julie and Colin each describe how the trip allowed them to test their relationship, to explore their roots, and to indulge to the max their shared taste for adventure.From the Hardcover edition.