How YouTuber Harry Dwyer’s sailing trip around UK has revealed best of Britain

If you want to see it in action, take a look at Harry Dwyer. Decent, kind and softly spoken, he’s the person least likely to be a star of reality TV yet his YouTube series has accumulated more than three million views.

With no tattoos, fillers, hair extensions, fake tan or diet product to flog, he is instead your average middle-aged bloke, except for the fact that he has a tiny boat.

When it was gifted to him, Harry wondered whether he could use it to circumnavigate the UK… so he set off to find out. Five years later, his little films documenting the slow and often chaotic journey are a source of joy in an age of despair.

Mesmerising ode to coastline’s beauty

An average episode involves lots of getting wet, eating Scotch eggs, losing things, long walks to petrol stations and fretting about tides as Harry pootles around the coast of Britain at 15 knots or slower.

It’s a mesmerising ode to the beauty of the British coastline, life in the slow lane and something else as well. It’s real life not touched by producers, directors, brand consultants, PR people, inclusion advisors or voice coaches. The result is moving but more than that, it is hopeful.

As Harry winds his way around Britain, he meets an endless procession of the kind of salt of the earth, decent people we’re led to believe don’t exist anymore. Many follow his progress on boat-tracking apps and appear like magic to help.

From driving hundreds of miles to offer him a lift to fetching petrol and giving him somewhere to pitch his tent at night, the milk of human kindness turns out to be as plentiful as it’s ever been.

When he passed Fife, locals came out in their boat with tips on navigation. In the latest episode around Newcastle, it’s a bloke turning up at the harbour with a bulging bag of stottie cakes and other good local things to eat.

What’s in it for them? Absolutely nothing except the feeling that they have helped someone trying to achieve something ordinary and yet extraordinary.

Only good things

Spoiler alert, Harry’s epic journey is finally over. He managed to complete the circumnavigation and sailed up the Thames at the end of last year to a hero’s welcome. It turns out a tiny boat can sail all around Britain without sinking, crashing or getting lost, but that isn’t really the point.

No one tried to steal his boat or his phone or his wallet. Throughout the epic journey, only good things happened.

With a controversial new programme putting viewers through the experience of a small boat channel crossing to test their attitude to migrants, this is a reminder that the vast majority of people in this country are decent, caring and want to help.

You don’t have to make sensational series for Channel 4 to find that out, you just have to watch the low-budget adventures of Harry and his own small boat.