SLOW TRAVEL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 659, 22 February 1952, Page 12

SLOW TRAVEL

THE INLAND WATERWAYS OF ENGLAND, by L. . C. Rolt; Allen and Unwin. English price, 21/-. VAGABOND PILGRIMAGE, by Frederick Cowles; Robert Hale. English price, 12/6. ENGLISH RIBBON, by Jack Hilton; Jonathan Cape. English price, 12/6. "‘HESE three books have one thing in common in addition to their common subject of travel in England-all three authors went by the slowest rather than the quickest means from place to place. The first threaded his way, am-phibian-fashion, by canals and locks and bridges; the second went about by push cycle, motor-cycle, bus, and on foot; and the third pushed a handcart loaded with a tent and necessary equipment. Mr. Rolt writes a complete history of the waterways, their upkeep, their

importance economically to the various industrial centres they serve, and the various changes that have come to them. He describes the gypsy family life of the boatmen, the customs and centuries-old patterns, picturesque and strange; explains the advantages and disadvantages of using horses to draw the boats-horses and mules are still used on some canals, also donkeys which are always referred to as "animals," for some unexplained reason-and gives a great deal of information about canals now in disrepair and about the tonnage and economic importance of those still in use. This is a half-technical and halfpopular book of great interest. Mr. Cowles was told by a stranger in an air-raid shelter one night that English writers all wrote dull guidebooks full of places and dates, and forgot to make a buddy of the reader. So after the war was over Mr. Cowles set out to walk and cycle and bus about England to write about his travels with a buddy, in mind. His book is. surely as chatty as his air-raid adviser wented it to be, and yet I, for one reader, don’t find myself a buddy. He travels with gypsies, talks with all manner of workers and _holiday-makers, visits museums and churches, goes into forests, gets lost, sees circuses-in fact, his book is crammed with pleasantness and with first-rate photographs; I only wish it had been a little less intentionally chatty. : In the beginning I felt a little the same about English Ribbon-wasn’t Jack Hilton being too deliberately the worker with the pen? His descriptions of mill-workers and the multitudinous factory works of the eities he visited were so much more detailed than his descriptions of anything else. But gradually I was won over. Mr. Hilton and his wife Mary, pushing their hand-cart up stiff hills and along valleys, calling (continued on next page)

at farmhouses to ask if they might pitch their tent for the night, waking early and brewing-up, seeing England from the true ground-level, make a big appeal to a ground-levelmreader.yAnd when they: come to Epsom) and ‘camp for Derby store up treat for every horse-minded readernever have 20 pages of race-talk been better written or more pleasant to read.

J.