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"The Creaky Traveler", Warren Rovetch
Sentient, 2002  (Reviewed at publisher's request)

This is really two books in one, part separate and part interwoven. The main book - about three quarters of the whole - recounts the author's travels up the north-west coast of Scotland. The other book is a handbook of travel advice for Creaky Travelers ("the mobile but not agile").

Rovetch and his wife travel modestly, covering perhaps 40 miles between each stopover of two or three days. This gives them plenty of time to stop and linger, admire views, talk to people, and soak up atmosphere. Being creaky, they do not go in for long walks, and certainly not uphill. While they lose out by being restricted to short distances from their car, their meticulous preparation and research mean they make the most of the places they can access. They make sure, too, that they are open to any serendipitous encounters which come their way and for which their leisurely pace gives them time.

It is 14 years since this reviewer travelled through the same area. Some things have clearly not changed: the wild and remote scenery, the shifting colours and textures of the landscape, the way the mountains of Assynt rise individually from the surrounding mosaic of moorland and lochans, the self-assured self-reliance of the people who carve a living out of this marginal land. Rovetch appreciates all these, and describes them with warmth and sympathy.

Other things, though, have changed. European Union money has made Lochinver a much more active fishing port. More comfortable and enjoyable places to stay and to eat in have opened. Traditional music has grown over a very short time from being an eccentric activity of a small minority into a significant movement. And the people of Assynt were the first to achieve a buy out of "their" land from the landlords whose vast estates cover most of the Scottish Highlands.

These aspects of Highland society are covered at some length. In fact the book deals far more with the people and the culture of the region than the scenery - there are relatively few passages just describing the landscape.

The handbook-within-a-book offers sound advice to less mobile travellers, although even non-Creakies will find plenty of useful tips. Rovetch's pre-departure research and preparation is particularly impressive. At times, though, the handbook and appendices intrude into the main account, sending the cover-to-cover reader flicking back to see where he or she had read some passage before - a thought, perhaps, for future books in the series.

But overall, Rovetch has shown how much there is to appreciate and enjoy in this corner of Scotland. Travelling with open eyes and ears, mind and heart, he knows that although he is only 600 miles from London he is in a completely different country. North American readers will particularly appreciate his handy rules of the road for driving in the Highlands, and discerning travellers everywhere will thank him for daring to speak out against the British catering industry's shameful abuse of so-called "toast"! ART

Overall verdict: Sympathetic and discerning account of a journey through the wild and remote north-west corner of Scotland.

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Starting your book, "I'm not, by nature, a betting man. I'm not, by nature, a drinking man", raises a certain level of expectation in the reader - and happily Hawks' book lives up to this.

Englishman Hawks takes off on a one-month quest to hitchhike around the circumference of Ireland with a 2 x 2 foot fridge in tow, after making and, perhaps even more daftly, honouring a drunken bet.

Not surprisingly, he arrives in Dublin with a certain amount of trepidation and visions of loosing face/being mistaken for a terrorist/freezing to death by a lonely roadside. However, with the people of Ireland mobilized early on by the nation's favourite radio talk show host, he soon gets into the swing of things. Together he and his fridge go surfing, enter a bachelor festival, meet the poorest king on earth - and discover a direct correlation between the pace of life and the time it takes a pint of stout to settle.

As those familiar with his British radio and TV appearances will expect, Hawks has a fluid and amusing style. He also comes across as a fairly likeable fellow, no doubt a helpful trait when trying to persuade strangers to give you and your fridge a ride.

You won't find rapturous descriptions of Ireland's green countryside or an insightful analysis of the country's present-day condition here. At its heart, this book is about the people of rural Ireland, who manage even in the face of Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" economic boom to maintain a relaxed, accommodating and often eccentric take on life. Those Hawks encounters display a refreshing abundance of warmth, generosity and good humour. Above all, they understand why a man would wish to undertake such a foolhardy and pointless venture in the first place - and therein lies the secret of the book. CM

Overall verdict: A very entertaining read.
Also see Humour
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"Oh no", I thought. "Not another crazy travel writer doing something offbeat. Still, s'pose I better read it." And I am glad I did. Llewellyn's trip with his girlfriend Rohan may have been born out of a premature mid-life crisis and a desire to see Russia, but ends up being an enjoyable and fast-paced story of their trip from Sevastapol on the Black Sea all the way north to Murmansk on the Arctic Ocean.

That this is a bit of an odd undertaking is pretty clear from the outset, but when you spice it up with Llewellyn's worrying obsession with nuclear power plants a little bit of danger is thrown into the mix. Not that his girlfriend is entirely happy about the slow-acting radiation they might be cycling through, eating and drinking.

This is not a book to read for insights into long-distance bike touring. It does however present an interesting, and very localized take on post-Soviet republics. The friendliness of many people, often welcoming these biking oddities into their house, comes across most strongly, and the cyclists often agonise over subtly throwing away gifts of hand-picked fruit, "the first harvest since Chernobyl", one farmer proudly declares.

The mood changes from country to country with the Ukraine coming off far the best. But the best is - of course - saved for last. Right up in the far north, amid hypothermia-inducing blizzards, the pair take a boat trip to the Gulag Archipelago that does not proceed quite as planned, and Llewellyn is treated to an ad-hoc tour of Zapadnaya Litsa submarine base. "I wanted to see the submarines," burbles Llewellyn at the gates.

This book is a quick read, but no less insightful for that. Many many miles must have been covered that merited very little penmanship, but Llewellyn does well with what he has and makes an informative and at times heart wrenching read. JT

Overall verdict: Bowl through post-Soviet landscapes, and be glad it was them, not you.

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This may be McCarthy's first book, but his ample writing experience is clear in this extremely well written, funny, and touching account of his travels in his mother's native western Ireland. Oh yes, and of his quest to drink Guinness in bars called McCarthy - a laudable aim of any trip. Studiously avoiding any of the new laddishness of Tony Hawks' Round Ireland with a Fridge, McCarthy the Englishman makes an excellent travelling companion. He regularly gets lost, condemns or praises each new-found drinking partner in a sentence or two, and all the while stops short of falling into the Bryson trap of reveling in heritage while lambasting modernity.

One of the best features of the book is his snippets of Irish radio phone-in shows. Behind the hilarity, it is these that offer some of the clearest insights into modern rural Irish life with no need for further commentary.

In constant search of affirmation that he somehow belongs in Ireland, yet ever aware of the similar claims of every American tourist he meets, McCarthy ends up pondering some big questions about identity - and ends up with some suitably complex answers.

But this is not a deep metaphysical book - we are also witness to McCarthy running away from bulls, gatecrashing parties and regularly comparing the price of Singapore noodles. However the killer section - and it is a denouement that creeps up on you - is his time spent in purgatory. I will say no more.

If you need dispelling of the notion that Ireland is all shamrocks and leprechauns, then many books will suffice. But if you want to try and understand a country through the eyes of someone desperate to come to terms with all that it stands for, I doubt you will find a more entertaining way of doing so. JT

Overall verdict: Excellent read.
Also see Humour
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It is hard to believe that Tim Moore is quite the couch potato he would have us believe. Although anyone daft enough to attempt to tackle the route of the 2000 Tour de France with even some training must be a sprocket short of a chainring. Moore claims less training than this and thus is the scene set for his comic journey through France, and his fourth book.

Tour history is not all so tragic - the rules also come in for much mockery. In 1913 one rider - sticking to the rules - had to carry his bike 10km to a blacksmiths and forge a new pair of forks. He was then penalized a further 10 minutes because he received help from a third party: the blacksmith's boy who pumped the bellows!

Some of Moore's personal anecdotes, however, are a little hard to believe, and some reviewers have criticized his "mock everything" approach. For me, it still works. He sets out his stall from the beginning and mocking everything includes mocking himself.

Somewhat inevitably, as Moore's fitness improves over the course of his month's odyssey, the cycling become all-consuming and he lapses at times into a pedal-by-pedal account that may be of less interest to the non-cycling reader. The book may start coasting downhill towards the end, but this does not detract from the overall read, nor from the climax of the story which is well worth hanging on for. JT

Overall verdict: If you like cycling, you'll love this.
Also see Humour
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Theroux exports his ascerbic wit to the Mediterranean for this reconstruction of the Grand Tour. It is pointless berating him - as many do - for his constant criticism and disparaging remarks. What is more remarkable in this book is the contrasts he throws up, both in his own writing - the tone of which shifts several times - and in the places he sees. He studiously avoids high-brow culture in one form, opting for the "real" towns and villages, yet spurns the tourist meccas for literary discussions. An interesting mix, but of course both indigenous village, and concrete resort are real, and people live and work in both places.

He acknowledges his horror of the worst of the Spanish coast with this particularly damning passage: "The meretriciousness, the cheapo appeal, the rankness of this chain of grease-spots is so well known it is superfluous for me to to describe it; and it is beyond satire. So why bother?" Sadly, I imagine Theroux's usual conversational approach to travelling would create marvellous vignettes of some of these places. But he has more prestigious and authentic fish to fry.

His section on the former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia and the chapter on Albania are truly worth the price of the book alone. Albania, in particular, is still all but unknown in western Europe and this is an eye-opening account from 1994 of the poverty and paranoia of this most isolated of European states.

Exhausted, Theroux takes a break before recommencing his journey in an unexpected setting: a luxury cruise liner. Although potentially at odds with his usual modus operandi, I enjoyed this section immensely. Theroux manages to unearth the interesting characters on board and what could be more Grand Touresque than drifting through the Med with the wealthy. Is this Theroux playing at being Fitzgerald? If so, he does it with aplomb.

Once he changes tack again, and battles through the Middle East, and eventually to North Africa, the book turns ever more into a literary pilgrimage. An interesting one undoubtedly, but his much-promoted brother Peter (who is an Arabic translator, as Paul frequently mentions. Did no-one edit this book?) obviously helped him along the way here. However, Theroux does get to meet some very interesting writers, even if he rarely engages with them on a personal level, at least not for our benefit.

Despite the contrasts alluded to earlier, the thread that runs throughout the book is that the Mediterranean region's identity transcends national borders. Everywhere he goes, Theroux is at pains to explain that the coastal towns are more like each other than their own hinterlands. Not a revolutionary point to make, but an interesting and well-enforced one here.

At one stage he explains that irony is often mistaken for curmudgeoness. He rarely helps to keep the distinction clear, but nevertheless Pillars of Hercules is an epic tour of a much-visted, yet rarely-contemplated tourist region. JT

Overall verdict: Stick with it.
Also see Africa/Middle East
Also by Paul Theroux: The Old Patagonian Express & The Great Railway Bazaar
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