Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Travel Memoir
Approximate word count: 50-55,000 words
Availability
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on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or
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Author:
The author
of several children’s books, Wood also has a guide book to help cyclists
interested in repeating his ride from the bottom of England to the top of
Scotland. This book is a travel memoir, chronicling his adventure on that same
ride.
Description:
“Smashed
from his bicycle by an articulated truck Royston Wood found himself unable to
complete a long planned for 875 mile cycling event. Battling the demons of
failure he devised a plan to ride a similar distance across the UK from Land’s
End to John O’Groats. With only a few days to plan the whole trip he delegated
the routing to Google Maps. Cycle routing was brand new and in beta testing:
what could go wrong…”
Appraisal:
I’ve always
enjoyed reading travel memoirs like this, where the traveler has a goal. This
makes the story more than just the author’s reaction to the world around them
and how they fit in it, but also involves the logistics of meeting their goal
and ideally some self evaluation as to why they are driven to do this. Wood has
all of this with a touch of self-depreciating humor to spice things up. Here’s
an example of what I mean:
After a final re-pack to find my
wallet, which was on my desk, I wheeled my bike out to reception where a crowd
of colleagues had gathered to wave me off. I thanked them both and pedalled
away to the railway station wondering whether the other forty people in the
building would even notice I wasn’t there over the next week.
Although
not a guidebook for someone with a goal of making this same trip from the
bottom of England to the top of Scotland (the author has one of those
available, too), you’ll find a lot of details about the route Wood took on his
ride. For some readers, possibly too much, although I found it helped reinforce
the story of the logistics involved in planning and executing the ride. For
those like me who enjoy this kind of true story (even though there is no way
I’d ever try to duplicate it), this is a decent read.
FYI:
Uses UK
spelling and slang.
Format/Typo Issues:
A small
number of typos. There were also several words that were hyphenated for no
apparent reason. (Presumably a remnant of formatting for a print version. These
should not be in the Kindle version, but were.)
The book
also had a lot of photos from Wood’s trip. (These were black and white on a
Kindle. They might display as color on color capable readers and tablet
computers.) However, in one section of
the copy I received, some of these pictures were missing, instead showing an
icon that I interpreted as a missing picture or an issue in displaying it.
Rating: **** Four Stars
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