Bookish Adventures
There’s nothing quite like an adventure is there? Adventures in books can really let you explore, have experiences you might not have the chance to have yourself or be brave enough to try. But what about books where people have done such amazing things and then written about them in travelogue form?
There are some amazing people out there who explore the world in ways most of us can only ever dream of. I personally would love to walk the Nile but reading Levison Wood’s book and watching him on television helps me to at least feel I’ve been there with him. Travelling the world with Michael Palin on the route of Around the World in 80 Days – well wouldn’t that be special? Again not very likely. Although the adventures I read about in children’s books such as the Famous Five did lead me to getting stuck in trees and falling off stepping stones so what would happen if I tried to have the same adventures in books now? Hmmm
There are some however I would very much like to do – here they are……
Travelling around the world on a motorcycle?
Charley Boorman and Ewan Mcgregor made the journey from London via Europe, across Russia, and via Alaska and back to New York. Would this not be the best kind of journey to do with a best mate, the sense of freedom, the wind in your hair (well bar the helmet of course) and the exhilaration of flying along on your bike on the open road… With some of the landscapes in Russia being so desolate and sandy, imagine the scenery and the thrill of being in places not many people have been to before?
Take yourself off to an island retreat…
Patrick Barkham loves islands – he’s visited many of them around the UK, some which aren’t really very known and this book is fascinating as who knew the British Isles had so many hidden corners? Some islands barely have any one living on them and so they take on an added sense of isolation and remoteness. I feel I know the Shetlands a little thanks to Ann Cleeves and Mark Billingham gives an interesting visit to Bardsey in Wales – both in this book so another visit, with history and more. A journey around the islands around the British coast would be brilliant -this book is a great guide.
Off to Timbuktu
An iconic location as it’s often a place you mention if you’re talking of somewhere, anywhere that’s far away. I remember the time at school when I realised Timbuktu was a real place. It was jus after the confusing moment when I had heard someone tell my mother at the school gates that another mum had been “sent to Coventry”. Well I saw her the next day and from then on thought that Coventry must be very close to the North East. Amazing to think I love maps and geography now! Ha!
Nick Jubber is one writer and adventurer who has been to Timbuktu and followed in the footsteps of 16th century traveller Leo Africanus, he went on a turbulent adventure to the forgotten places of North Africa and the legendary Timbuktu. He speaks of encounters with jihadists, having to hide the real reason when he was there, but the amazing sense of finding what was almost a lost and forgotten world. People from another world, language and culture and where the food was something else too when you are nomadic and living in the desert.
Really find a lost paradise
This might be a fictional adventure but I bet there are many people who have either tried it or gone in search of their own paradise. It’s the ultimate adventure story and tale of escapism isn’t it? A beach, an island tucked away and hidden from the world. A cross on the map marks the spot. At first it seems like paradise – a group of people who have found this place have cut themselves off from the world, are living self sufficiently and have structured a hierarchal but also ‘equal’ society. They are wary of the newcomers but then they start to let them in…but getting out is going to be a problem
Apart from finding yourself in a very dodgy hostel with a drug addict at the beginning of the book, I would love to do this one day. But not all of it, of course. For years after this book came out, it seemed to really capture the imagination of backpackers all over the world. I think it’s every traveller’s dream isn’t it? to find a place no one has spotted before, or where not many people have ever visited.
Susan Booktrailer
