I am more engaged by Ted Simon’s 4-year journey on a Triumph Tiger than I am by Mark Beaumont’s 78-day spin. In contrary fashion, I am actually a great fan of such accounts, though many are very poorly written. Least Heat Moon indicates that Steinbeck’s ‘ Travels with Charley’ was a seminal account – he also reckons that there are now over 2000 such travel books to consider. Huck Finn’s desire to, ‘ Light out for the territory’, has become something of a cliche and of course, America being the size it is, allied to the myth of the west and westward expansion, inspired and inspires such ventures. The point of this rather digressive introduction is to ponder the nature of travel – which after all is what, ‘ Blue Highways‘, is all about. Now, it’s impressive, but what’s to savour in that? You might just as well do it on a set of rollers. Now, it’s not where shall I go, more, how shall I do it – with a fridge on my back or shall I just see how fast I can complete? By bike, the current record is 78 days 14 hours and 40 minutes (there is a rumour that it was actually 39 minutes) to get around the world. It took about 15 minutes.Īnd that’s the nature of travel – what was once an expedition is now a relatively safe afternoon stroll – as evidenced by the ridiculous queues to get up Everest (though plenty still die up there) and what I imagine are (or were?) streams of gap year backpackers falling over each other to get into a once remote location. Many years later I persuaded my daughter to take the same walk – which is lovely. Given it was the first time I had ever done it on my own it seemed like a lengthy expedition.
This involved walking from Thornhill down to Low Mill along the river Ehen by the beck fields and past the shoe factory into Egremont. When I was about ten I went to see ‘Born Free’ with a friend. An influential if at times flawed travelogue from the late 1970s.
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