It's the Journey not the Destination

The subtitle of this beautifully illustrated hardback explains the contents: ‘40 slow adventures by boat, bike, foot and train’. The author hopes that your adventures by these four slower modes of travel will enable you to concentrate on the world around you and inspire you to get in touch with your five senses.

This chunky volume is divided into four sections: Journeys on Foot, Journeys by Bike, Journeys by Boat and Journeys by Train; the contents page clearly shows which spread covers a particular part of the world. Helpful maps occur at the beginning of each section and coverage in terms of countries and continents is fairly comprehensive and wide-ranging.

Students with an appetite for amazing facts will love this publication. For example, the pages advising the reader to ‘Experience the Haunting Beauty of the West Highland Way’ include interesting details such as ‘two kilted clans — Clan Gregor and Clan Colquhoun — fought the savage battle of Glen Fruin here 400 years ago’ (p.18). Every page is lavishly illustrated and includes some great historical facts including how New Zealand became the country where all Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films were shot!

Award winning writer Carl Honoré is a proponent of the Slow Movement and wrote a book in 2004, In Praise of Slow, has had his works translated into 35 languages and is a popular speaker on TED. This book is brought to a close with ’12 Ways to Travel Slow’ (p.94) which contains some excellent advice for living, and appreciating the journey rather than just the destination. In the light of the pandemic too, his advice is very useful, and I feel this book will be very successful. The illustrators are also to be commended on this project; their work augments the text beautifully. This book would be a fantastic present for a young person who is especially keen on geography and/or history and would also be very inspiring and topical in the classroom or library.