Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A novel for the You Tube generation – when things go very wrong indeed…
The White Road
What you need to know before your trail
Adrenaline-junky Simon Newman sneaks onto private land to explore a dangerous cave in Wales with a strange man he’s met online. But Simon gets more than he bargained for when the expedition goes horribly wrong. Simon emerges, the only survivor, after a rainstorm trap the two in the cave. Simon thinks he’s had a lucky escape.But his video of his near-death experience has just gone viral.
Suddenly Simon finds himself more famous than he could ever have imagined. Now he’s faced with an impossible task: he’s got to defy death once again, and film the entire thing. The whole world will be watching. There’s only one place on earth for him to pit himself against the elements: Mt Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.
But Everest is also one of the deadliest spots on the planet. Two hundred and eighty people have died trying to reach its peak.
And Simon’s luck is about to run out.
Travel Guide
Wales and Cwn Pot Caves
This cave was exactly as described in the novel – popular with cavers until three students became trapped and died in the tunnels in 1983.
The cave and the infamous tight ‘Rat Run’ (narrowest part of the caves are real). This is the mountain and caves to which Simon goes to explore. He finds the one man who will take him there. His aim is to creep through to where the bodies remain, and film them. Only things don’t go to plan. The journey through here is claustrophobic, tough in places to read, creepy, damp and you can hear the water dripping from the walls. It’s chilling but reads very realistically. The author has clearly done her research on the techniques and fears of cave explorers.
Mount Everest
Blimey this bit is equally as chilling and claustrophobic despite the high altitude and all the space!
The Everest scenes of the book are just as immersive and fascinating as the cave scenes . Simon doesn’t really have much experience of this either but he’s determined to go up the mountain purely to film the dead bodies which remain there. You get a really clear sense of the sheer physical challenge a climber puts their body through going up this famous mountain .Most scary of all is the confusion engendered by oxygen deprivation at altitude.
Simon is chasing bodies but also ghosts. For he finds out about someone who climbed the mountain years earlier but was never found. He reads her diaries and is then visited by “the third man” a spectral figure who follows him around. This is a similar feeling to the one he had down in the caves. What could it mean and is he alone now? Was he alone then?
Blimey…
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The White Road
Destination: Wales, Mount Everest Author/guide: Sarah Lotz Departure Time: 2000s
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