Mr. Newby has captured a way of life that for good or bad, no longer exists. His style of writing (along with many hair raising
photographs), depicts life aboard a square rigger the way it truly was; few amenities, almost ceaseless toil, and the ever
present dangers of falling from aloft or being washed overboard.
In this day of high tech everything, it might seem incredible
that many men would willingly endure such hardships. Yet ironically, most of these sailors frowned upon steamship crewmen
as being too soft!
To all of those "arm chair sailors" who may think that a seamens life
was carefree and romantic, I strongly urge them read this book
and dispell any such myths!

This book is just wonderful. Newby's prose is colorful without being judgemental - a quality too rarely found in modern adventure writing (the egocentric griping of Paul Theroux comes to mind). Here is a young man who accepts his new surroundings as they are, trying his best to fit in and never complaining too much when they don't live up to his personal standards. What's more, on a ship full of discomforts and frightening safety gaps, he resists the tiresome 20th-century urge to become a whistleblower. (Then again, perhaps the knowledge that he was witnessing a dying way of life made an expose pointless.)

As one would expect in such a cramped environment, observations of the other crewmembers form an important part of the narrative. That they are a dirty and rough lot is clear. Newby, however, handles the yawning social gulf between himself and the career seamen with general good humor, never resorting to national stereotyping to downgrade his adversaries (the crew was mostly Scandinavian). His description of being forced "op the rigging" by a loutish officer just minutes after arriving on board is a good example of this evenhandedness and should be ranked among the classic passages of travel writing. I can't see Theroux ever forgiving that kind of treatment.

Apart from the sheer height of the rigging, the greatest shock delivered by the book is the realization that this "vanished" way of life existed so recently. (In my case, only 25 years before I was born.) To use a cliché, it makes one stop and think. Although Newby goes to considerable pains to explain why the age of commercial sail had to end - indeed, was already past its time - you cannot help but explore the "what ifs". What if World War II hadn't scattered the fleet? What if the owners had found ways to reduce their operating costs by a few percentage points? Would it have made the difference? Would square riggers still have been plying the high seas on my sixteenth birthday? Could I have been another Eric Newby?

Again, just a wonderful book. Together with Laurens Van Der Post, Newby is my ticket to all things "vanished".

Unfortunately the unappealingly named "The Last Great Grain Race" might be left on the bookshelf if it were not for its companion volume of photographs more appropriately titled "Learning The Ropes; An Apprentice on the Last of the Windjammers," both by Eric Newby. Oddly these volumes were issued over forty years apart, Grain Race in 1956 and Ropes in 1999. (A recent volume of Grain Race was reissued in 1999, possibly to take advantage of the pictorial release.)

After a brief stint as an office clerk, Newby at eighteen signed on as an apprentice seaman for an around the world cargo voyage, with no nautical experience or skills other than a careful eye and superb memory for detail. "The Last Great Grain Race" is the story of one of the last four-masted barques, which in 1938 sailed from Ireland to Australia to pick up a cargo of grain and return to Ireland, a voyage which would take nine months. Ultimately it was to become the last voyage in such a vessel, as the impending war would change the world forever. We are fortunate that Newby was along to document the voyage. We are equally appreciative of his thoughtfulness in bringing his camera, as "Learning the Ropes" is the superb photo essay of this journey.

Newby apparently was a very skilled photographer. Oddly, he only briefly mentions his possession of a camera in "The Last Great Grain Race." He never lets on that his is so actively chronicling events and shipmates throughout the voyage. Though Newby does an excellent job describing what is like to climb aloft in all kinds of weather, the black and white photographs take the reader aloft as well and provide the narrative even with more impact and grace.

The crew is as varied and colorful as one might expect the conditions are harsh and oftentimes dangerous; the work is unrelenting, demanding and dangerous in its own right. Newby works alongside seasoned veterans and never shirks.

Grain Race however does have its limitations. There is a tremendous amount of technical detail that can often leave the reader literally at sea. For example "There were still the sheets of the topmast staysails to be shifted over the stays and sheeted home, the main and mizzen courses to be reset, and the yards trimmed to the Mate's satisfaction with the brace whips." Newby does provide a graphic of the sail plan and running rigging (79 reference points), but these are only of marginal assistance.

Another shortcoming is the language barrier Newby faces. This is a Finnish crew and commands are rarely given in English. Newby and the reader often have to work out the language; if the reader misses the first context or explanation then subsequent uses of the terminology will be lost, a glossary might have helped here. Newby does faithfully record dialects especially when he is being spoken to in occasionally recognizable English and these dialogues are often amusingly recounted.

Eric Newby should seriously consider issuing both in a single volume and one has to wonder why this wasn't done when Grain Race was first issued or at least when "Learning the Ropes" was released a couple of years ago. It is interesting to speculate on the length of time between the original release of Grain Race and the very vivid and informative photographs. Regardless it was worth the wait.

Grain Race the narrative and Grain Race the photographs make for an enjoyable double read.

In Departures And Arrivals, British writer Newby and world traveller Eric newby describes his latest travel adventures with a gift for irony and description: here his experiences in Calabria, with canal travels, and in Beijing capture the vivid peoples and personalities he encounters. An excellent armchair read.

Unfortunately the unappealingly named "The Last Great Grain Race" might be left on the bookshelf if it were not for its companion volume of photographs more appropriately titled "Learning The Ropes; An Apprentice on the Last of the Windjammers," both by Eric Newby. Oddly these volumes were issued over forty years apart, Grain Race in 1956 and Ropes in 1999. (A recent volume of Grain Race was reissued in 1999, possibly to take advantage of the pictorial release.)

After a brief stint as an office clerk, Newby at eighteen signed on as an apprentice seaman for an around the world cargo voyage, with no nautical experience or skills other than a careful eye and superb memory for detail. "The Last Great Grain Race" is the story of one of the last four-masted barques, which in 1938 sailed from Ireland to Australia to pick up a cargo of grain and return to Ireland, a voyage which would take nine months. Ultimately it was to become the last voyage in such a vessel, as the impending war would change the world forever. We are fortunate that Newby was along to document the voyage. We are equally appreciative of his thoughtfulness in bringing his camera, as "Learning the Ropes" is the superb photo essay of this journey.

Newby apparently was a very skilled photographer. Oddly, he only briefly mentions his possession of a camera in "The Last Great Grain Race." He never lets on that his is so actively chronicling events and shipmates throughout the voyage. Though Newby does an excellent job describing what is like to climb aloft in all kinds of weather, the black and white photographs take the reader aloft as well and provide the narrative even with more impact and grace.

The crew is as varied and colorful as one might expect the conditions are harsh and oftentimes dangerous; the work is unrelenting, demanding and dangerous in its own right. Newby works alongside seasoned veterans and never shirks.

Grain Race however does have its limitations. There is a tremendous amount of technical detail that can often leave the reader literally at sea. For example "There were still the sheets of the topmast staysails to be shifted over the stays and sheeted home, the main and mizzen courses to be reset, and the yards trimmed to the Mate's satisfaction with the brace whips." Newby does provide a graphic of the sail plan and running rigging (79 reference points), but these are only of marginal assistance.

Another shortcoming is the language barrier Newby faces. This is a Finnish crew and commands are rarely given in English. Newby and the reader often have to work out the language; if the reader misses the first context or explanation then subsequent uses of the terminology will be lost, a glossary might have helped here. Newby does faithfully record dialects especially when he is being spoken to in occasionally recognizable English and these dialogues are often amusingly recounted.

Eric Newby should seriously consider issuing both in a single volume and one has to wonder why this wasn't done when Grain Race was first issued or at least when "Learning the Ropes" was released a couple of years ago. It is interesting to speculate on the length of time between the original release of Grain Race and the very vivid and informative photographs. Regardless it was worth the wait.

Grain Race the narrative and Grain Race the photographs make for an enjoyable double read.

In 1938 Eric Newby was eighteen years old. He left a dead end job with an advertising agency in London and signed as an apprentice seaman on the four-masted sailing ship Moshulu for a trip to bring back a shipload of grain from Australia. Moshulu was one of a dozen sailing ships still engaged in the grain trade and the 1938 trip was destined to be the last of the merchant sailing era.

Newby is undeservedly less well known than other writers who have imitated him. His books, "A Small Place in Italy, "On the Shores of the Mediterranean" and "The Big Red Train Ride" have been imitated by other authors. His writing style is spare and matter-of-fact; he doesn't try to impress the reader with overblown prose instead letting the facts speak for themselves without florid editorial comment.

There's a funny account a trick played by the Belfast stevedores on the sailors of Moshulu. Among the tons of rocks loaded into the hold were two dead dogs. The decomposing dog carcasses fill the ship's hold with an overpowering odor that plagues the men as they dump out the ballast and load the grain months later off the shore of Adelaide.

The Last Grain Race goes into great detail describing the operation of a sailing ship, complete with obscure jargon names for the sails and rigging. Newby seems to have been working too hard on the trip to completely enjoy and appreciate it. The books gives a glimpse at a lost world of merchant sailing ships and the quiet life of sailors at sea, now exchanged for sparsely manned giant container ships crossing vast oceans in a matter of days.

Moshulu returns to Queenstown, Ireland on June 10, 1939 after a pace-setting 91-day passage by war of Cape Horn. It had taken 8 months for a round-trip in which Moshulu brought 4,875 tons of grain from Australia to Ireland. Newby leaves the ship a full-fledged Ordinary Seaman. World War II will start in a few months and obliterate the peaceful world of merchant sailing ships.

I was ready to drive from Seattle to San Francisco when I stopped at the library for some road music and a book on tape. This particular day, I found a jewel by one of the greats, Eric Newby's "The Last Grain Race". Eric Newby has done so much, and has been so many places that it boggles the mind. This book chronicles the beginning of his life as a true adventurer, when on the eve of WWII, he shipped out as a complete novice seaman on one of the largest sailing vessels ever built, bound for Australia and back.
Though I've been reading his books for 20 years, for some reason I'd never run across "The Last Grain Race", and for well over 1000 miles I listened to the reading of this book, and when I got to Portland on my return leg, my first stop was at Powell Books to grab a hard copy of the book.
This is one of the finest books I've ever read. I was going to say "seafaring books", but that is too restrictive.
Eric Newby's commentary and sense of humor are first-rate, like always. While listening, and while reading, I was transported by this book. The conditions seem indescribable, but Newby succeeds in describing them, and paints cold, wet portraits of the days and nights in the rigging and the foc'sle of the barque "Moshulu". I subsequently found a book of the photographs of this voyage, Newby's "Learning The Ropes", which gives us faces to the cast of "Great Grain Race".
Old friends of my youth came to visit while I was engrossed in this book, Sterling Hayden's "Voyage", the film "Windjammer", and the loss of the sailing ship "Pamir" in the late 1950's. The "Moshulu" survives today, as a restaurant ship in Philadelphia, but she was interned on Lake Union in my hometown of Seattle during WWI, and her consort, the "Monongahela" was the last tall ship to pass under the George Washington (Aurora) Bridge before it was closed to tall-masted ships.
An interesting sidelight: While recently rewatching "Godfather II", I noticed that in the scene where young Vito Andolini (Corleone) arrives in New York, the ship he's on is the "Moshulu".
Eric Newby is one of a kind. When he is gone we'll never see his like again.

I've read many personal narratives about World War II and I must say this is an excellent book!!!

During World War II, the rural citizens of northern Italy vowed to assist Allied soldiers on the run in their mountainous region. They were operating on an informed heart, on the Golden Rule, wanting to give aid to those who opposed the hated Fascists and Nazis as they would hope someone would help their own sons. And while the Allies were protected by the Geneva Convention should they be captured, the citizens were not and they were subject to less humane punishment, sometimes torture and death, if their actions were found out. But they did it anyway. It is these people, who otherwise lived a pastoral, ancient way of life, whom travel writer extraordinaire Eric Newby profiles in his memoir, LOVE AND WAR IN THE APENNINES.

Those familiar with Newby's other books will find his signature wit, self-deprecating humor and descriptive powers at work here, but his curiosity and appreciation of other people and cultures is in highest gear. He comes to meet the peasantry of northern Italy after fleeing a prison during the chaos following the ouster of Mussolini in September 1943. He is helped by a succession of individuals and families, including the woman who would become his wife and companion in later adventures, the estimable Wanda. The book ends with his unfortunate recapture by the Germans and in an epilogue he revisits the people who took him in ten years after.

Newby is a hugely gifted writer, his sentences are knowing and clear as a bell. He orders information rhythmically, always knows when less is more and more is more. He never bows to sentimentality, never sells anyone out. He does a remarkable job of expressing the fear and dispiritedness that politics and war heave on a people, at the same time revealing their resilience. There is much to admire in this book.

The Italians Newby depicts in this memoir (and also in his "A Small Place in Italy") are often funny, but never buffoonish. Newby's warm admiration for country folk is always evident, as in this passage where a retired stonemason helps remove an enormous boulder from the hideout the locals are making for him:

"He went over it with his hands, very slowly, almost lovingly. It must have weighed half a ton. Then, when he had finished caressing it, he called for a sledgehammer and hit it deliberately but not particularly hard and it broke into two almost equal halves. It was like magic and I would not have been surprised if a toad had emerged from it and turned into a princess who had been asleep for a million years."

Readers familiar with Newby's travel writing will find all his strengths here: his eye for detail, his warmth of character, his humor (mostly self-deprecating). They will also find a love story -- one made all the more poignant by Newby's craftsmanlike selection of few but telling scenes.

They don't come sweeter than this. Facing middle age, Eric Newby abandons his chosen career as a fashion wholesaler to embark on a whimsical journey to remotest Afghanistan to attempt a mighty peak that has never been climbed. His companion, an old friend, knows as much about high-altitude (or ANY) climbing as he does: not a skerrick. They are almost parodies of a vanished England - absurdly brave, amateurish and uncomplaining; Newby's account of their scratchings up airy ice-walls will have the sweat springing from your palms. Along the way we get a rich insight into the rare mountain societies of one of the most mysterious nations on earth, but it is Newby's character itself that makes this book such a joy. Self-mocking, his courage entirely inferred, Newby's modesty holds until the final hilarious, appalling line. We may not want to go climbing with him, but we'd welcome his company on any journey. In fact, Newby's courage was always a key to his personality. His teenage years were spent as a high-rigging sailor on grain ships in the Southern Ocean. In World War Two he was a commando with the Special Boat Squadron. His capture, escape, and life on the run is memorably recounted in another of his classics "Love and War in the Appennines." But for me, "A Short Walk.." remains his most charming, exciting and extraordinary book.

Good travel narrative should begin with self awareness and, one would hope, a sharp wit on behalf of the writer. That's the entertainment half. It should end in a new appreciation of place and culture for the reader, the edifying part. A Short Walk In the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby delivers on all accounts. Though the "short" walk of the title took place circa 1956 and the book was published in 1958, it has special pertinence for the contemporary reader. The name of the mountain range translates as the "Killer of the Hindus," straddling Afghanistan and Nuristan, the wild vortex where cultures and powers have collided in attempts to bridge east and west for thousands of years. Most recently, of course, the region has figured in the war on terrorism. In fact, I have a much better grasp of the multicultural nature of the land and its political history from Newby's careful notes than from contemporary media.

Even if the Hindu Kush was irrelevant to latterday headlines, Newby's narrative is worthwhile reading. To explain why an urbane executive in the fashion industry would quit and suggest a trek in partly uncharted mountain range in a alien land, with no experience in mountain climbing, he begins with a hilarious account of his London job. He also speaks to that national urge to get off the island and go look about. His is a genuine yearning for exploration, for experiencing "the other." The trek, taken with a pal and some local guides, is often perilous. At the very end, the Newby party meets up with the embodiment of the stuffy military Brit who belittles their achievement. The author does not have to answer for the reader or himself-we know, as he does, that it was quite extraordinary.

Newby is great company, a fine writer who doesn't make the story about himself even when starring in it. Lonely Planet is to be thanked for keeping this in print.

Quintessentially English bit of travel, with the ambitious idea of climbing Mir Samir in Afghanistan, but ostensibly to visit Nuristan next door. The English bit comes into play when you discover that Newby isn't a mountain climber, nor is his traveling friend. They "practice" for four days in Wales before embarking.

This is the type of travel literature I favor. A trip, yes, with its attendant hazards and foibles, but also a story about the travelers, why they travel and the people they meet. So far, I can sense a "difference" in travel writing, easily two categories now, but possibly many others. This book would join with Seth & O'Hanlon as a "Hardship Trip"--a journey filled in pain and danger. Salzman and Mayle are "Sedentary Travelers." They both got to the place, then stuck around and observed the things that happened around them. This book also has one of the best last lines I've read in quite a while. I can't quote it, because not only would it ruin the line for you in case you choose to read this book yourself, but also because it is necessary to sit through the 180 or so pages that go before to fully appreciate the irony of it.

I've read: "Under the Tuscan Sun", "Extra Virgin ...", "An Italian Affair", "In Maremma: Life and a House in Southern Tuscany", "Italian Neighbors" and I'm on my way to the library to pickup and start reading "Pasquales' Note: Idle Days in an Italian Town". I started reading these types of books when I got lonely for Italy after visiting in November of 2001. I just finished "A Small Place in Italy". Each of these books have something special in it that I enjoyed reading about. I really enjoyed reading about the person Attilio. Attilio came with the house when they purchased this house in Italy -- he had his own secret room. I enjoyed reading about how they hired their local tradesmen to renovate and repair this house. I hope I never run out of these types of books to read, I do plan to return to visit Italy, it would be a joy to visit some of these small towns.

In 1967 Eric & Wanda Newby fulfilled a long-cherished dream when they bought a rundown farmhouse in northern Tuscany, in the foothills of the Italian Alps. Published for the first time in the US, a Small Place in Italy describes how the house was restored with the help of their neighbors, a colorful cast of characters who quickly befriended the Newbys

In 1967, British travel editor Eric Newby and his wife, Wanda, bought a primitive farmhouse in the hills between Liguria and Tuscany, the region where they met during World War II, Newby a soldier on the run between POW internments, Wanda a relief worker. They are the first foreigners to come live in their neighborhood, which remained unchanged from the time of the War; in fact, the country people, contadini, probably lived pretty much as they had for a couple of centuries or more. In the 25 years that the Newbys stayed, using the farmhouse as a second home but tending the land seriously, they were accepted and came to know the people and area well. A SMALL PLACE IN ITALY is a profile of their neighbors, their work, customs and the surrounding area. He offers up historical notes and chronicles the arrival of the late 20th century and loss of old ways.

This book has everything going for it. Newby is honest, a truthful writer. He never sells out his subject for entertainment or sentimentality. He does not go the route of portraying the noble savage, he does not paint the peasantry as buffoons or children, he does not go over the top to prove that he is one of them. It is obvious that he and Wanda were quickly accepted into the community because they were hard workers who respected the land and were happy to share. There is a fine wit and spirit at hand. Newby has to be the most resilient person on earth (see A SHORT WALK IN THE HINDU KUSH for more evidence).

Other virtues of this book: the pages whip by because Newby is brilliant at ordering his information. He also translates the Italian phrases and words that pop up routinely, so that those of us unschooled in Italian, particularly northern Italian expressions, are not at a loss.

A much better book than the title might suggest. I couldn't let it go once I had started, even though it is a bulky book. The stories are short, pithy, and really varied. Some funny, some weird, some horrifying. And it tells you a lot about people in other parts of the world. Heaps of things. A wonderful read, I would buy it if it were in print, even though I am trying to limit my book collection.

Eric Newby is a serious travel essayist for serious travelers. A consummate pro. ON THE SHORES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN, originally published in 1984, is his chronicle of a resolute journey around the circumference of the Mediterranean, an arduous tour of ancient cities, ruins and near ruins that would have surely daunted a lesser man. Beginning at his home in Tuscany, he shepherds the reader along to Naples, Venice, Montenegro, Albania, Mt. Olympus (in Greece), Istanbul, Turkey's Mediterranean shore (the Troad), Jerusalem, the Pyramids, Tobruk (in Libya), Tunisia, Fez (in Morocco), Gibraltar, Seville (in Spain), and Nice (on the Côte d' Azur). After 484 pages (in paperback) of relatively small print, I collapsed exhausted.

Newby has an exceptional eye for detail and history, which can provide either joy or torment to the armchair traveler. SHORES accomplishes both. He's at his very best when describing the Harem at Topkapi (in Istanbul), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (in Jerusalem), the nightmare (and somewhat comic) bus ride from Tripoli to Tunis, and the Moroccan city of Fez. His very worst had to be the chapter dedicated to Holy Week in Seville, a migraine-inducing and seemingly endless enumeration of processions, floats, statues and religious brotherhoods involved in the Roman Catholic celebration of this yearly festivity. Enough already, for cryin' out loud! (And I was born and raised Catholic, even!) The fact that Eric has an unfortunate penchant for constructing looooooong sentences, sometimes in excess of 100 words, doesn't help.

The biggest disappointments of this otherwise laudable book were two. First, because of conflict in the city, he didn't visit Beirut, Lebanon. Second, too infrequent mention was made of his long-suffering travel companion and wife, Wanda, who would occasionally contribute a pointed remark about the latest fine mess that husband Eric had gotten them into. I liked Wanda a lot.

I bought the book based on reviews and the fact that I wish to go to India next year. While the book itself is a true account of one man's travels, it falls short of a journal and is more akin to a matter-of-fact digest of the places and people encountered.

It is unfortunately lacking in prose, dialogue and structure. There are wonderful brief spurts of Newby's humour in writing which encourages the reader to continue, but these are few and far between.

Certainly not for travellers.

Unlike his grounded colleague, the river traveller can indulge his bent for distraction only so far. His route is more or less fixed; certainly his destination is final. And so it is to Eric Newby's credit for eliciting from this journey 300 pages worth of erudite and witty observances, for it is essentially a procession of waterborne shuttles, one ghat to the next, punctuated only by the occasional onshore foray, the function of which mostly being to secure boat and crew for the succeeding leg. I suspect, though, that Newby could glean 300 pages from a dinghy ride in a swimming pool, and that that too would be immensely readable.

The archetypical harrassed traveller, at every turn events conspire to defeat or, at the least, humiliate Newby. The atmosphere of the journey is established during preparations which smack of the comical: "I had even bought an immense bamboo pole from the specialist shop in the bazaar as a defence against dacoits whose supposed whereabouts were indicated on some rather depressing maps which G. [their sometime native companion] had annotated with this and similar information, in the same way mediaeval cartographers had inscribed 'Here be dragons' on the blank expanses of their productions." In any case, these maps proved unserviceable. Because of hostilities with China, Indian Defence Regulations of the time (1963) were so stringent that it was impossible to buy large-scale maps of India of any kind. (At any rate, many maps of the Ganges are unashamedly indecisive of its course owing to the shifting alluvial bed.)

Typically, arrangements that had been made in advance proved to be anything but arranged. The vessel intended to provide passage through the upper reaches of the Ganges was discovered to be in such a state of disrepair that use of it in a bathtub would have endangered lives. Attempts to procure another led Newby on an endeavour which he describes thus: "What we were doing in this instance was the equivalent in Britain of waking a fairly senior officer of the Metropolitan Water Board at a quarter to seven on a Winter's morning, in order to ask him to wake a yet more senior official and request the loan of a boat from one of the reservoirs in order to go down to Southend." Of course, the acquisition of another vessel appeased their troubles only momentarily.

The journey proper was fraught from the outset: "It is difficult to describe the emotions that one feels when one is aground on a twleve-hundred-mile boat journey within hailing distance of one's point of departure." When not stranded upon a shoal Newby is confounded by the various tributaries shooting off this way and that. About this he consults the only man in India worse off than he: "There was only one person to ask the way from, an old man sitting alone on the shingle, but he was not very helpful. 'I don't know where I am,' he said."

When defeated by such circumstances Newby must, to advance his journey, venture ashore and seek out assistance. This demands the infiltration of the interminable mores of Indian society, a kind of mystic bureaucracy under which the populace shuns reason in favour of the myriad allegorical incarnations of the pantheon of mythic figures. He says of making even the most innocent inquiry: "But I knew that this was not the kind of question that can be asked in India - it was too logical and would therefore cause grave offence." He shortly arrives at the conclusion: "In India it is possible to win every battle but the last one."

During such battles Newby often retreats to his arsenal of introductions, formal letters written by state officials and the like, the ace up the sleeve of the traveller at tether's end. Not surprisingly these missives of officialdom are met by the Indian everyman with bemusement or else total indifference. His choicest letter, that from the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is singled for particularly devastating apathy.

Newby's travelling companion, his wife, the long-suffering Wanda, is rendered something of an enigma in SLOWLY DOWN THE GANGES. Apart from delivering Newby from the dire gastric consequences of provincial Indian foods ("Wanda had produced [white radishes] artfully from a mysterious-looking bag.") her reason for being appears mostly to be for materialising at inopportune moments, usually the apex of some maddening asperity, in order to scorch the occasion with some withering remark. This surely had Newby tearing at his hair, but the narrative is infused with a rich vein of self-deprecating humour because of it. (Their courtship, which was borne of hardships much graver, is recounted in another of Newby's titles, 'LOVE AND WAR IN THE APINNENES')

Newby's own wit is deliciously dry. Unlike many contemporary travel writers he does not over-reach for a laugh or rely on out-and-out ridicule. However, his capacity for a descriptive turn of phrase is tested here. Certainly there are scapes that would arrest the senses of even the most impassive observer - shores lined with crazed sadhus and puja-devoted villagers, a river strewn with the pungent remnants of funerary pyres - but there is little variation on this theme for 1200 miles. And if the scenery is unchanging, then the characters - those folk along the way who lend a travel narrative its colour - are positively inanimate. Newby does admirably though, adroitly drawing from the cultural abyss the idiosyncrasies and personality interplay of guides and boatmen.

And so, his route may be fixed and his destination final, but Newby never fails to appreciate the telling advantage he holds over his grounded colleague: "The only consolation about being lost on a river is that if you go on downstream you are bound to arrive somewhere different, unlike being lost in a forest, where you are quite likely to end up where you started at the beginning of the day."

****1/2 stars.

(Contrary to what you may read, this book is anything but "insipid". Nor is it "lacking in prose, dialogue and structure." It, in fact, revels in them.)

I found this book very disappointing. It is neither a travel book or a history book. Eric Newby's positive approach to life and adventure seems to be missing in this book and I found his attitude towards the people, the weather, the condition of B&B's, the roads and the food very condescending. His complaints about his bicycle sounded to me like a bad workman blaming his tools. Even if you have 21 gears you still need the skills to use them. Why oh why does he complain about the weather when he chooses to cycle around the westernmost outpost of Europe in Winter? Want a good cycling book? Then try Miles from Nowhere with a sympathetic author who gets into more serious scrapes and comes out of them with better grace and humor than the Newbys.

can't help but agree with another reviewer and concur that this book neither inspires nor stimulates, an unexpected experience with Eric Newby's writing. The occasional and unwelcome slide into condescension displayed might well be a reflection of the author's mood. I suspect this might have resulted from an almost unbelievably bad choice of travel timing for a book of this nature. Ireland, in winter, on a bicycle? As gloomy a metereological prospect as the literary result. Try Tony Hawkes' 'Round Ireland with a Fridge' for an infinitely more enjoyable read.

The author and his wife, sexagenarians both, took four tours of Ireland in one year in the 1980s, mainly by bicycle. The author has no inclination to conceal his rather acerbic personality, so you may find yourself rooting for the trucks early on. But keep reading, there's many a worthwhile nugget awaiting, and it's easy enough to discard the refuse. By page 291, when the author or his editors or the Lonely Planet reprinters get the spelling of "fuchsia" right on the fourth attempt, you will feel that anything is possible. So when the author cuts short his description of the final leg, decides not to undertake a planned trip to Northern Ireland, and leaves the book in its present rather untrim state, you're apt to feel a considerable sadness.

The maps provided by Lonely Planet add value to this edition.