# Old-timey Travel Writing **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [September 21, 2024, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538 "2024-09-21T01:06:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/1 "2024-09-21T01:06:51Z")
Travel writing is sometimes enjoyable. Both the quality of writing and my interest in a specific location might vary wildly. Bill Bryson and Mark Twain amuse even in ordinary places. Shackleton writes surprisingly well of adventures in a more unusual one. I enjoy old-timey travel books when they describe places or events that are long gone or now exist in very different ways. I was reminded of Twain and Shackleton after stumbling upon the Penguin “Great Journeys” excerpts from much bigger works. Maybe excerpts are not a bad idea, not every traveller writes concisely and not all travel writing ages well. **What is your favourite travel writing?** **What would you recommend to others?** ---
**Author:** ![Jaycat.again](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat.again/32/11525_2.png) [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/2 "2024-09-21T01:12:58Z")
Paul Bowles, “Their Heads are Green and Their Hands Are Blue.” Stories of his sojourns in North Africa and Sri Lanka. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/3 "2024-09-21T02:13:06Z")
John Steinbeck’s _Travels with Charley_ is still a fun read, even if it’s more fiction than fact. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/4 "2024-09-21T02:37:09Z")
I still have to go with Mark Twain. And his essay “The Awful German Language” fits in with it. _A young lady has no sex but a cabbage does._ ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/5 "2024-09-21T03:16:31Z")
Jerome K Jerome, if you like that sort of thing. Richard Burton ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/6 "2024-09-21T03:47:09Z")
I have read a lot _about_ Burton, but except his English translation of _The Thousand Nights and a Night_ I haven’t read his travel work. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/7 "2024-09-21T04:00:33Z")
I read and enjoyed that whole Penguin series. A really good selection. Some were hard to find! I then read many of the books they were excerpted from. I recommend Richard E. Byrd’s _Alone,_ about his 1934 Antarctic adventure, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s _The Worst Journey in the World,_ about the race to the South Pole, and for more contemporary journeys, any of Michael Palin’s travel books. Tété-Michel Kpomassie’s _An African in Greenland_ is a pretty amazing story. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/8 "2024-09-21T04:03:52Z")
_Sailing Alone Around the World_ is pretty interesting (if you can get around the likelihood that Joshua Slocum was some kind of sex offender). ---
**Author:** ![Cumberdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@Cumberdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cumberdale)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/9 "2024-09-21T04:19:27Z")
Years ago, I read a book about an English woman who rode a bicycle across the US solo. It was an interesting read and unfortunately, I don’t remember her name, the title of the book or exactly when she made her trip. It was an interesting read and I wish I could remember something about it and give it another look. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/10 "2024-09-21T05:25:40Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I have read a lot _about_ Burton, but except his English translation of _The Thousand Nights and a Night_ I haven’t read his travel work. My impression is, he has a good eye for detail and is a compelling storyteller. I am mostly familiar with _Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to el-Medinah and Meccah._ An old-school adventurer. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/11 "2024-09-21T09:17:50Z")
Bringing down the tone, here’s an old-time writing style best remembered in parody [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/8RTWk9QIKS0/hqdefault.jpg "PETER SELLERS - 'Balham - Gateway To The South' - 1958") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RTWk9QIKS0) ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/12 "2024-09-21T09:34:01Z")
I read Charles Darwin’s “The Voyage of the Beagle” not long ago, after my psychiatrist of all people recommended it. We know today how crucial a voyage this was in the history of science, and it’s really well told and written. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/13 "2024-09-21T16:15:19Z")
[Close to the Wind: An Extraordinary Story of Triumph Over Adversity.](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2170953.Close_to_the_Wind) By Pete Goss. Extreme travel. Pete Goss competed in the Vendée Globe, a nonstop, single-handed round-the-world yacht race. Spoiler: He barely survives sailing through a hurricane, then gets radio communication telling him another sailor needs help. He turns around and sails back into the hurricane attempting to save his competitor! ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/14 "2024-09-21T16:33:14Z")
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s _A Time of Gifts,_ _Between the Woods and the Water,_ and _The Broken Road._ The author set out to walk from Rotterdam to Constantinople as a bright, feckless 18-year-old in the 1930s, but he didn’t get around to writing up his adventures until decades later (and still hadn’t finished the last volume when he died at the age of _96_ – the last few chapters are taken straight from the diary he kept as a youth). It’s at once the story of a charming kid setting out on his big adventure and (mostly) having the time of his life, and a much more sober reflection on a vanished world; the shadow of the Holocaust and World War II and the Iron Curtain are always looming over the places and people he encounters, and the adult narrator knows it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/15 "2024-09-21T18:56:22Z")
Tristram Shandy, from the late 18th century, has a book which consists of travel writing. (Book 7, I believe.) Sterne says something to the effect that a travel writer can be identified as claiming that they know more about a place after a week there than people who have lived there all their lives. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2024, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/16 "2024-09-21T19:19:40Z")
42 years old now, so ‘old-timey’ to some extent (no cell phones or Internet play any role!): _Blue Highways_, by William Least Heat-Moon (born William Trogdon). Very entertaining and memorable. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2024, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/17 "2024-09-24T00:21:25Z")
I read _Blue Highways_ when I was 18 and since then I’ve gone over some of the stretches of highway Heat-Moon was on to see how much they have changed. I’ve noticed in particular, that the section of US 101 on the Oregon Coast has become more developed. ---
**Author:** ![fedman1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e495f1/32.png) [@fedman1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman1)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2024, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/18 "2024-09-24T10:22:45Z")
any of Paul Theroux books ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2024, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/19 "2024-09-24T20:43:22Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > I’ve gone over some of the stretches of highway Heat-Moon was on to see how much they have changed. You should write a travel book! _Blue Highway_s was popular enough that you’d have a lot of curious readers… ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2024, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538/20 "2024-09-24T21:54:04Z")
A father-son author/photographer team retraced the route 30 years after Heat-Moon’s trip and wrote about what they found in [Blue Highways Revisited](https://www.google.com/books/edition/BLUE_HIGHWAYS_Revisited/WaaI4g1rWe4C?hl=en). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-travel-writing/1007538.md?page=2)