Anne Mustoe (1933–2009)

I am a confirmed armchair bicycle tourist. Anne Mustoe is one of the widely acknowledged great writers in the genre. The one minor disappointment of this book is that Mustoe doesn't ride her bike for the larger part of her travels here. She's probably more disappointed by that than her reader will be, though!

I don't know much about South America. This book was a great fun way to pick up some basics. Mustoe starts and ends her trip in Buenos Aires. She rides southwest to cross the Andes into show more southern Chile. She then takes buses through Chile to its north, then east through Bolivia, then back southeast to Buenos Aires.

The title captures the themes: she follows Che Guevara's motorcycle route to Chile. Then from Bolivia the theme is the mountain of silver in Potosi. There is much talk of the Spanish conquest and then the nineteenth century independence from Spain and the wars especially where Bolivia loses territory to its neighbors.

I recently read Vaclav Smil's Enriching the Earth, which features the nitrate fields which Chile now includes in its borders. Mustoe sketches quickly the importance of these but just touches on nitrate synthesis. But that is the fun of this kind of book - it seeds so much further exploration!

Will I ever ride that road south from La Quiaca? Probably not! But Mustoe surely expanded my world with her travels, physical and intellectual! show less

The three tales here, the Amber Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, and the Pilgrimage Trail, are told in a delightfully balanced way. Mustoe knows plenty of history so there is a lot to learn here about these places. Mustoe also meets many people along the way, fellow travelers and the local people. Some she likes, some she doesn't. And then we get the stories of the hot and the cold, the climbs and the descents, the wet and the dry, the crowded and the remote.

There is almost no technical detail show more here. Mustoe hardly mentions what she carries on her bike, and even less the bags in which she carries it. The word "derailleur" occurs just once, if I counted right. Mustoe tells us that she has no interest in sport. She doesn't train before a tour. She is out to explore the world. She does share quite a bit of detail on mileage and hours of riding. She rides slowly - so do I!

Mustoe is a credit card tourer. There is no camping here. Probably she has a tent but just for emergencies. But she is on a budget, too, so these are not luxury tours. These feel like practical adventures, well within the reach of average folks... at least if you can retire healthy!

It's not really a meditative book. The action is not really internal. What binds the narrative thread is really the history. On that thread is then strung a series of personal experiences and observations.

It's a well written book, a pleasure to read. It definitely motivates a person to get out and explore! show less

Anne Mustoe was an amazing woman. This is the story of her first long distance cycle trip - 12,000 miles. It starts slowly but you soon get drawn into her adventure. She writes in a very low key way and this does mean that you can feel that you are getting only half the story.

The inspiration behind this journey is for Anne Mustoe to travel from the site of Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames in London to the place in Egypt where the original monument came from, Heliopolis. Once again she would travel alone on her bike and to add to the challenge would follow the course of rivers and seas where possible. Her journey will take through four European countries and across the Alps before crossing the Adriatic and heading down towards where Europe meets Aisa; Turkey. show more The last part of her ride takes her through what is now a very troubled area of the world, as she passes Syria, Lebanon and into Egypt.

This is the first of Anne Mustoe’s books that I have read. She is a pragmatic, no nonsense type of character, who does not let most things phase her. She suffers from a knee injury, is robbed, cycles up and over the Alps and runs out of whisky and gets very wet more times than she cares to remember. She cycles solo most of the time but is joined on occasions by friends. As she rolls along the route, we are told about the people she meets and learns about the history of places that she passes through. The prose is quite matter of fact as Mustoe writes in a straightforward and competent way. It is not the best cycling travel book I have read but makes for enjoyable light reading. Will be reading some of her others, as this was one of three I picked up at the same time. 2.5 Stars show less