Julian Worker Travel – A few ideas for your next trip in every direction

From Abruzzo to Veneto, glorious but lesser-known beauty spots beloved by Italian holidaymakers

The children’s novelist and screenwriter on pubs, green spaces, childhood memories and those ubiquitous watery views

Smaller European cities make for brilliant breaks with kids, be they toddlers, tweens or teens

From Abruzzo to Veneto, glorious but lesser-known beauty spots beloved by Italian holidaymakers

With its fast ferry network, quiet roads and jaw-dropping mountains, the Helgeland archipelago is the perfect place to try e-bike touring

With its fast ferry network, quiet roads and jaw-dropping mountains, the Helgeland archipelago is the perfect place to try e-bike touring

This is the sequel to Three Men in a Boat and it is really rather good, especially when the three men – George, Harris and J – are travelling around the middle of Europe interacting with the locals and passing judgment on their surroundings as they move from Hamburg to Berlin and Dresden and their destination The Black Forest.

A bummel is a journey either long or short without a specific end date. It strikes me everyone should go on a bummel occasionally.

There are some amusing anecdotes – George tries to buy a pillow / cushion for his aunt but ends up with a peck on the cheek from an embarrassed shop assistant (the difference between kissen and kussen). Harris tries to stop a man watering a road in Hanover and ends up wetting everyone in sight in his struggle to wrest the hose from the man’s grasp. J steals a bike from a train under the mistaken impression it was Harris’s bike and not a complete stranger’s bike and ends up having to explain himself to the police who believe him to be a thief.

There are some excellent insights into the male character, for example on a man’s sense of direction:

“My instinct is correct enough; it is the earth that is wrong. I led them by the middle road….If the middle road had gone in the direction it ought to have done, it would have taken us to where we wanted to go.”

and a great reason why English spread through Europe and beyond

“But the man who has spread the knowledge of English from Cape St Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the Englishman who, unable or unwilling to learn a single a single word of any language but his own, travels purse in hand into every corner of the Continent.”

This is the sequel to Three Men in a Boat and it is really rather good, especially when the three men – George, Harris and J – are travelling around the middle of Europe interacting with the locals and passing judgment on their surroundings as they move from Hamburg to Berlin and Dresden and their destination The Black Forest.

A bummel is a journey either long or short without a specific end date. It strikes me everyone should go on a bummel occasionally.

There are some amusing anecdotes – George tries to buy a pillow / cushion for his aunt but ends up with a peck on the cheek from an embarrassed shop assistant (the difference between kissen and kussen). Harris tries to stop a man watering a road in Hanover and ends up wetting everyone in sight in his struggle to wrest the hose from the man’s grasp. J steals a bike from a train under the mistaken impression it was Harris’s bike and not a complete stranger’s bike and ends up having to explain himself to the police who believe him to be a thief.

There are some excellent insights into the male character, for example on a man’s sense of direction:

“My instinct is correct enough; it is the earth that is wrong. I led them by the middle road….If the middle road had gone in the direction it ought to have done, it would have taken us to where we wanted to go.”

and a great reason why English spread through Europe and beyond

“But the man who has spread the knowledge of English from Cape St Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the Englishman who, unable or unwilling to learn a single a single word of any language but his own, travels purse in hand into every corner of the Continent.”

This is the story of Yorick, a sentimental traveller, who on a whim decides to journey from England first to France and then head towards Turin in Italy. His journey takes him via Calais, Amiens, Rennes, and Versailles to Paris.

Yorick doesn’t describe his impressions of the places he visits, the monuments, the architecture or much of the countryside. He regales the reader with stories of the people he meets along the way.

The book tells us more about the effect the journey is having on the central character than about the places the central character is visiting. There’s two journeys taking place and it’s difficult to know which is the more fascinating.

If you’re expecting a travelogue then Yorick makes it clear early on that you’re not going to get that kind of book.

Heritage tour guide Hayley Flynn strolls through Victorian alleyways and shares tips on hidden histories, art trails, cosy pubs and her favourite eateries