The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

Forty years after arriving in the U.K., Bryson decides to travel about to visit many of the places he'd never seen. Of course, after 40 years in a smallish country, he also ends up in many places he hadn't seen in decades and can't help but compare them to his memories, and the present day version often loses. This is an older, grumbling Bryson, who complains about train lines, customer service, housing developments, the disappearance of traditional British shops and littering. He also delves into the history of Stonehenge, the fishing industry, holiday camps, eccentric museum founders and nuclear power. He visits perfectly preserved tiny villages, seaside towns with their best days behind them, and lots of small museums. While not show more everyone would enjoy being guided by a testy old man who constantly complains that things aren't what they used to be, I was happy with his surly company. Bryson hasn't lost his sense of humor or his sense of adventure. He walks every chance he gets, taking roads and trails without knowing where they'll lead him. show less

A very entertaining follow-up to "Notes From a Small Island". Having become a citizen of the UK, Bryson decides once more to explore the small island on foot. The book offers many handy insights into travelling around the UK, issues with transport, and the changing natures of cities. I absolutely adore Bryson's curmudgeonly attitude to everything from grammar and punctuation errors, to TripAdvisor (I hear you!) and what appears to be the ever-expanding prevalence of general ignorance. An entertaining and rewarding reading.

Twenty years on, lovable curmudgeon Bill Bryson revisits some of the locales from his breakthrough travel memoir Notes From a Small Island as he loosely follows a straight line from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, which he has dubbed the “Bryson Line”. As ever, Bryson gives the reader as much history, both social and economic, as he does information about the current state of Britain’s tourist destinations. But best of all are his wanderings, small diversions, quiet rants, and mumbling grumbles about the state of the world (by which he means Britain) today. He’s an Anglophile that desperately wants the country he loves to be worthy of the affection he has laboured upon it over these many years. And it’s hard for a reader not to show more concur (because would you really be reading this book if you weren’t an Anglophile as well?). He’s reached an age where he can look back and tell readers, from personal experience, how things used to be. And many of those things are much changed, most for the worse, but some also for the better.

Bryson’s style is ambling, possibly rambling, but there is purpose in his digressions. Frequently he becomes irate about the present state of things, or the “idiot” he is dealing with, only to reveal moments later that he had completely misunderstood the situation or not been where he thought he was because he was reading the wrong side of the map. He’s like an elderly grumbling uncle who periodically is led away to a quiet corner of the room by his gently caring wife.

If you’ve read and enjoyed Notes from a Small Island, you will certainly find this book a pleasant read. And if you haven’t read the earlier book, I think you will still find this an enjoyable ramble with a good sort of walking companion. show less

Read: November 2017
Rating: 5/5 stars, best of 2017

Bill Bryson has got to be my favourite non-fiction author. After reading one of his books I always feel like I've just had a conversation with someone who's got some interesting but kind of obscure knowledge. I feel a bit smarter when I walk away. For example, despite being British, and having driven on English roads for quite some time, it had never occurred to me that there might be some kind of ordering system to our major roads. Apparently England is divided into six zones that all start from London and work clockwise around the country. The A1 is the road from London to Edinburgh while the A3 is London to Portsmouth etc. Of course, this being England the road system soon devolves show more into chaos but at least there was supposed to be a framework to follow - something I would never have bothered to find out for myself and thus can only learn from Bill Bryson.

This being Bryson, there are also many funny and insightful comments about the sometimes odd habits of the people he encounters on his travels. I love this passage from the latter half of the book:

"There are few things more reliably astounding than the British when they are enjoying themselves...they have the ability to get deep and lasting pleasure out of practically nothing at all. Give them a form of transport that was becoming obsolete in the time of Clement Attlee and they will flock to it. Did you know, Britain has 108 steam railways...run by 18,500 volunteers? It is an extraordinary fact but a true one that there are thousands of men in Britain who will never need Viagra as long as there are steam trains in operation." (pg 203)

A quote that personally resonates as I have grandparents that have volunteered at the Tramway Museum in Derbyshire for more than thirty years - spending almost every weekend of their free time with another form of obsolete transport :)

A great follow-up from Notes from a Small Island. show less

Bill Bryson is always funny, but he is turning into the grumpiest of grumpy old men. This sort of sequel to Notes From a Small Island is filled with rants, or 'reflex loathings' as he calls them - I don't disagree with him (especially on local authorities, litter and people paving over gardens to park their cars 'as close to their living rooms as possible'), but I dread to think how miserable his next book will turn out to be. 'In countless ways, the world around us grows shittier. Well, I don't like it at all' - lighten up, Bill!

Grumblings aside, Little Dribbling is another trip around the quaint old UK by our honorary (or should that be ornery?) travel writer, this time from Bognor to Cape Wrath by ruled line straight up the middle, show more through Dover, London, Cambridge, Skegness, the Peaks and the Lakes, Lancashire and Yorkshire, Wales and Scotland, countryside, seaside, town and city. He picks out some lovely locations, illustrated by quirky anecdotes - the destruction of the last stuffed dodo at the Ashmolean Museum and the 'congenital unsociability' of the Crewe family at Calke Abbey - all the while peppering his progress with diatribes on the state of civilisation. Pure Bryson.

I do wonder what he has against Queen tribute bands, though. show less

Bill Bryson explores the United Kingdom with a curmudgeonly attitude in The Road to Little Dribbling. I have not read his previous book on the isle, but I enjoyed this one a great deal. It was written only a few years ago so it still feels current. Bryson is American, but has lived in Britain for 40 years. He looks on the place with shifting measures of adoration and exasperation. The book isn't a purely humorous travelogue--indeed, he sometimes drifts into despair as he discusses rail transit and how many beach towns have died terrible deaths--but his dry humor helps to balance the darkness.

Some of my favorite lines include:
"Since that day, I have never assumed that anything is fun just because it looks like the English are enjoying show more themselves doing it, and mostly I have been right."

"It is often suggested that the British do these things for the pleasure of confusing foreigners, but that is quite wrong. The British don’t give a s*** about foreigners. They do it to confuse themselves."

"It is like rigor mortis with scenery."

"Butlin had invented the prisoner-of-war camp as holiday, and, this being Britain, people loved it."

"An information board from the National Trust informed me that an eccentric eighteenth-century owner named Joseph Pocklington held a regatta every year “where he challenged the people of Keswick to attack the island while he shot at them with his cannons.” They certainly know how to have a good time in the Lake District, it seems." show less

from Becca:

For lessons in travel writing, linguistics and dry humor, I recommend Bill Bryson's latest book, which reflects on the Great Britain he first encountered 20 years ago and compares it to Great Britain today. If you're listening to it rather than reading a physical copy, as I did, you'll also be treated to a wonderful performance that brings Bryson's bright mischief and hefty knowledge to life. Like always, Bryson's readers know (or should know) what they're getting into when they pick up his work. Basically, he often takes a story or investigation or joke to its very limit. And part of his charm is that he's a unabashed curmudgeon--but a lovable one, in most cases, one that makes you guffaw while, say, you're listening while show more doing the dishes. This book is no different, and just when I was ready to stop listening because of one repeated salty complaint too many, he moves on and focuses on something beautiful, weird or historically unique that I never would have known about Great Britain otherwise. So, I kept the volume up and the chapters going.

Overall, I trust Bryson's voice and experiences because I know he cares deeply about the places he's exploring, even--especially-- as a tourist in his own adopted country (he's now officially a citizen of Great Britain). One reason I wanted to read this book, in fact, is that I have been wanting to show my husband of almost a decade around the old haunts of West Yorkshire, England where I studied as an undergrad in the early 2000s. Because of Bryson's latest book, I now have more of an idea about where I'd want to seek out, and where I'd want to avoid. And the cherry on top? All those lovely/strange/musical British vocabulary words (I miss saying "ta" instead of "thank you," for example), and all those gorgeous descriptions of moors and walking tours; pub menus; and, one of Bryson's specialties, historic snippets about authors, poets and politicians.

If you can get past the sometimes intense curmudgeon-ness of his writing, this is a "smashing" read or listen, especially for any fellow Anglophiles out there... show less