wanderlust.co.uk September 2019 143THEBIGREAD DISCOVER
Book
of the
month
Best of the est
This month’s
bookshelf
is a peaceful
pilgrimTo the Island of Tides:
A Journey to Lindisfarne
Alistair Moffat
Canongate Books£20
Not all journeys need to be ‘epic voyages’.
Sometimes, travelling the lands that you
already know can be justasrewarding.This
proves to be the case forAlistairMo at,who
sets o from his belovedScottishBordersand
crosses into England
towards the tidal island of Lindisfarne, o the
Northumberland coast.
Mo at knows this neck of the woods
extremely well. The Scottish historian has
been writing extensively about his homeland
and its history for over 30 years, culminating
in 2017’s much-garlanded The Hidden Ways:
Scotland’s Forgotten Roads, which took him
o -the-beaten track to reveal a rich seam of
lost local detail.
From the monastery at Old Melrose
Mo at’s progression towards Lindisf
starts out as the chance to explore th
Cuthbert, the patron saint of Northum
who would in AD684 become the bis
isolated priory that once sat on the ti
island. By the time he reaches that fa
causeway, he’s wandered though Vik
history and England and Scotland’s
tumultuous relationship.
But it soon becomes clear that this
‘secular pilgrimage’ is also a moving
personal journey. For Mo at, much
as for Cuthbert, Lindisfarne
becomes a place of relection,
where history, his own past and
current travels become one. It’s quiet
rather epic in its own right, much like
island itself. Tom HawkerAs modern pilgrims
walk in the footsteps of
great saints, they feel
more than a sense of
the long past
Alistair MoffatA Hitch in Time
Andy Smart
AA Publishing, £10
Road trips don’t come more fun than
a 72,000-mile hitch-hiking escapade
from Liverpool to Pamplona. But that’s exactly
what comedian Andy Smart (a long-standing
member of The Comedy Store Players in
London) embarked upon in the late 70s,
spending six years living life from one bizarre
situation to the next. Whether he’s running with
the bulls in Pamplona or placating rile-wielding
hotel guests in the Pyrenees, things often gets
out of control, but Andy’s say-yes philosophy
always manages to save the day, charming any
reader who dares to join him on this cheerful
ridebackintoamoreinnocenttime.From the Lion’s Mouth:
A Journey Along The Indus
Iain Campbell
Bradt Travel Guides, £10
Travelling along the sacred Indus
River isn’t a decision taken lightly – its impossible
rapids spell out a risk that most people would
rather avoid. But Iain Campbell makes his choice
e ortlessly, one icy evening in Tibet when his
dreams of reaching its source are dashed.
Captivated by the stories that lie just beyond his
reach, he returns a year later to answer the call
of the river, hopping aboard unwieldy buses and
bumpy trains to follow it through tiny villages,
fairy meadows and Himalayan foothills,
encountering tribal ishermen and Kashmiri
soldiersonhisway.Great Cities Through
Travellers’ Eyes
Peter Furtado (ed)
Thames & Hudson, £25
Have you ever read a city guide and
wondered what the writer really thought about
the place? This is not your typical guidebook.
Instead, this intriguing collection of travellers’
tales gives you perspectives on 38 cities across
six continents from philosophers, explorers and
artists. Spanning from ancient times to the 20th
century, there are almost 200 extracts from
letters, diaries, memoirs and reports written by
famous igures such as Strabo, Marco Polo and
Charles Dickens, as well as more recent
accounts from journalists. These range from the
historic to the amusing to the scabrous, which
together create a revealing insight into millennia
of travel – and also travellers too.