The Well at the World's End

Another funny and self deprecating traveler's tale from the author of "The Unlikely Voyage of the Jack De Crow". This book tells of an earlier journey from NZ to Iona, a journey taken without flying and with many adventures and misadventures along the way. I was delighted to discover some of those travels are in familiar territory - I must've crossed paths with him in Darwin in 1990 when I was hitching east on a couple of yachts. I've also been delighted to learn that there is at least one other who sees their travels through the prism of Arthur Ransome, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein (etc...). If you loved the earlier book you will also love this one...

I met Mackinnon through Jack de Crow and thought well enough of that to order this book in. I didn't expect it to match his first journey and wasn't disappointed in the expectation, although the book was satisfying enough. Mackinnon himself I think pinned it down in the article linked to his author page. There he talks about travelling as a packaged tourist (missing the adventure and the gritty details), or travelling on an adventure quest (missing the sights on the way to the object of the quest), and the disadvantages of both approaches. This journey (from New Zealand to Scotland) proceeds at such a pace that Mackinnon's very slow reflective insights and humour doesn't have time to fully develop, so this ends up as more of a story show more about a journey, rather than a story about Mackinnon's reflections on journeying. That's not to say that there aren't gems on every other page, or that there aren't long intervals where he is going nowhere (waiting for a ride), but that even these slow times seem to pass at a breakneck pace (and actually he was dashing around trying to meet deadlines). One day he might write another book about slow and random travelling, wandering in fact, after the style of Peter Pinney. But first he'll have to give up his day job. So a worthy successor to 'de Crow' and recommended. But hopefully it is also a precursor to even better books to come. show less