But then he describes the beauty of ‘The Monsal Trail’ an 8 mile walk from Buxton to Bakewell. His attempt to pass the British citizenship test, his encounters with rude people who he just wants to hit over the head, and the way he advised the owner of the Indian restaurant he was eating in, The Gandhi, to make it an Elvis themed restaurant and call it ‘Love me Tandoor’ he’d had a few cobras by then. Oh, and not forgetting his description of the road systems of the UK – the A and B roads – sounds a bit boring, buts it’s a revelation! It makes me want to visit these places, far more than any other travel book I’ve read.
He’ll visit their homes which may be off the beaten track that nobody knows about. And apart from giving you the basics of the towns or villages hes been to, he also adds those little cracking bits of information about famous people who lived there, and the insignificant ones who should have been recognised in their lifetimes. His visiting the old preserve of a men’s outfitters in Buxton who offered trousers called ‘Splendestos’, (his new word to use after eating a meal) the wonderfulness of the ‘Fitzwilliam’ Museum in Cambridge, his in-depth descriptions of Wales and how he loved ‘Tenby’. What I so love about his observations of his adopted country, is his little stories he puts in along the way. ‘Little Dribbling’ is Bill’s travels around the country 20 years later, visiting places he’d never been, and ones he had to revisit to see if they had upped their game a bit. He has a fondness for the eccentricities of the British, and we have many. I wanted to write a short post this morning about ‘The Road to Little Dribbling’, a revisit of ‘Notes from a Small Island’, in which he wrote about his travels around Britain describing the quirkiness of the people and places, and the way the English get so excited about a cup of tea with a scone and jam. One (and there aren’t many) of my favourite authors is Bill Bryson, a witty funny writer of travel books.
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