Book 5 toppled – a tale of travelling, travellers and destinations

The Gran Tour by Ben Aitken is a travel book about coach holidays. I am not sure where I got this book from, although I think that it may have been from my monthly book subscription. I like travel books but I am not sure that I would have picked this one up and bought it because it is obvious that the book is about the people the author meets rather than places he visits.

The author, who is in his 30s, travels on six trips, organised by the coach company Shearings. Almost all of the other travellers are older people, hence the “gran” of the title. They visit mostly British seaside towns such as Llandudno and Scarborough but there is a trip to Lake Como and one to Killarney as well. The trips include bed, breakfast and evening meals at hotels and a number of day excursions, with evening entertainment involving bingo and cabaret type singing.

As I had anticipated, this book is mostly about the conversations which the author has with the people with whom he is travelling. He doesn’t depict older people as the fount of all wisdom but as people who have lived a long and varied life and who are making the best of their declining years. They accept the author into their midst and try to advise him about his future based on their own experiences. They teach him to enjoy company, friendship and the simple things of life. Although we get glimpses of the destinations we tend to see them through the eyes of his older companions.

This is a gentle book and it is amusing rather than funny. The opinions of the travellers are quirky and they have often had interesting life experiences and have definite views on life. It’s a quick read and the author has few conclusions about his travels except that he has enjoyed the company of these older people more than he had expected.

This was an entertaining enough read but my initial reaction was correct in that I don’t think that it would be the sort of book that I would normally want to have as part of my reading diet – I would have preferred a book about the history of the places visited rather than about the people who went there. If this is your type of thing then this book is good enough and the author avoids cynicism and criticism so it’s a cheerful read. I shall take my copy to the Sainsbury’s book table as it is a bit battered and it may find a reader who will enjoy it a bit more than I did.