The exquisite chronicler of Scratch Flat, Massachusetts, rolls far
afield in this gladdening excursion that follows the emerging of
spring into summer from Spain to the Hebrides. Mitchell
(Trespassing, 1998, etc.) follows a bicycle journey he took in the
early 1960s from Cadiz, Spain, to the Isle of Lewis in Scotland,
starting on the vernal equinox and ending on the summer solstice.
The author is a sensualist, a lover of literature, deep time, and
old night, and his ramble is tailor-made to feed those passions. He
follows the lengthening days, the blessings of the sun after the
winter months, and approaches the pilgrimage in the spirit of a
pagan oblate-he is taken with "the richness of ancient rituals and
primal gods and goddesses" and is well versed in the sun's
symbolism and myths; indeed, there are enough mythological tales
here-Helios to Ra to Sol-to keep even Edith Hamilton happy, and his
curiosity leads him down the strange paths of Mithraism, Aztec
sacrifices, and stone circles. But it's his willingness to stop and
smell the flowers that makes him such a companionable writer. He's
always ready to stop for a coffee or to shuffle off into the
greenwood just to poke around; always ready to take a long gander
at a stonechat or chaffinch or jackdaw. He never met a bed of
bluebells that wasn't made the better by the taking of a nap in
their midst, and there's always time to investigate a megalith.
Give him a good meal and a weird conversation, give him the back
lanes ("At Crow I skirted the town of Ringwood, taking a little
country road"-as if Ringwood were Calcutta), allow him to dally and
be diverted: "It was here, during these short excursions from my
excursion, that I came to better appreciate the landscape." Few
won't wish they were riding in Mitchell's slipstream, sharing in
all the sun and stories and places, the wine and the food. (Kirkus
Reviews)
An entrancing, sun-drenched bicycle journey, from the beaches of
southern Spain to solar temples in the Outer Hebrides. In this
great feast of armchair travel, John Hanson Mitchell tells of his
fifteen-hundred-mile ride on a trusty old Peugeot bicycle from the
port of Cadiz to just below the Arctic Circle. He follows the
European spring up through southern Spain, the wine and oyster
country near Bordeaux, to Versailles (the palace of the "Sun
King"), Wordsworth's Lake District, precipitous Scottish highlands,
and finally to a Druid temple on the island of Lewis in the
Hebrides, a place where Midsummer is celebrated in pagan majesty as
the near-midnight sun dips and then quickly rises over the horizon.
In true John Mitchell fashion this journey is interspersed with
myth, natural history, and ritual, all revolving around the lure
and lore of the sun, culturally and historically. The journey is as
delicious as it is fascinating, with an appeal for all those who
look south in February and are drawn to dunes, picnics under castle
walls, spring flowers, terraced vineyards, Moorish outposts, magic
and celebrations. In short, to everything under the sun. A Merloyd
Lawrence Book
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