The Road to Little Dribbling

Author/Guide: Bill Bryson

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: Celebrating just how Britain has changed in the 20 years since Notes from a Small Island

ISBN: 978-0857522344
Genre: Humour, Travelogue

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What you need to know before your trail

20 years ago, Bill Bryson, a travel writer with a witty sense of humour who hails all the way from Des Moines in Iowa, wrote a book in homage to his new adopted country of Great Britain. Entitled Notes from a Small Island, it details his wry observations and witty asides of life travelling around our small island. So what has changed in the past 20 years and more importantly how Will Bill Bryson write about it now in only the way he can?

You think you might know Britain but you won’t have seen it the way Bill Bryson does.

Locations

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Scotland
D: Cape Wrath

Travel Guide

Britain like any country twenty years down the line is different to the Britain of the island of many years previous. With similar subject matter and observations from that first book, this is both a revisit and a new insight into life all over the country.

Bill is considerably more grumpy this time round and is getting older himself of course and so nostalgia is now merged with the grumpiness and realisation of getting old and changing as a person too. Why are things so expensive in shops? For a man who enjoys to snack, this is a change he can do without. Shopping habits have changed considerably and from the small high street store to the large supermarket, Bryson takes you on a tour.

A tour which takes us all the way from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath. Durham, Cambridge, Wales, the Midlands, and everywhere in between come in to the mix with an interesting outlook on each place as he passes through)

And it’s a tour of observations – differences between the US and the UK – our love of cars and food and the fact that we now drop more rubbish and do it with tattoos on our arms.

There are snippets and gems to discover along the way – even about the London underground – however such as:

“According to Time Out magazine, at any given moment there are 600,000 people on the Underground, making it both a larger and more interesting place than Oslo.”

The tour takes in some of the more famous sites of the country but focuses rather on the off-the-beaten-track destinations or lesser known spots within popular destinations. Dover is not his favourite place but there are places he likes in Scotland and Wales and Selbourne in Hampshire comes out on top.

There are some sad observations about the changes in recent years however such as the fact that thousands of homes are being built on green-belt land in the last ten years alone and that this will have dire consequences.

But it’s the grumbles and the fact that cows are dangerous which will stay with you.