It’s Bear Grylls meets Norman Wisdom!

Walking The Great North Line Robert Twigger W&N €22.50 ★★★★★

Ostensibly, this is a book about a journey from Stonehenge to Lindisfarne undertaken for reasons that are never made completely clear. No matter, because this book is really about the author not the trip.

We are reminded of this often in sentences of the ‘I’ve sat with Bedouin late into the night round embers that are barely glowing’ type, which are reminiscent of both Rutger Hauer’s famous ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe...’ speech from

Blade Runner and that ‘I’ve been undressed by kings’ line in Charlene’s hit single ‘I’ve Never Been To Me’.

Apropos of little, Robert Twigger will tell us that he thinks kids should be given courses in firemaking rather than ‘the laptop lunacy of desperate teachers’. The resultant style is an uneasy mix of Bear Grylls, Kahlil Gibran and Norman Wisdom; macho adventurousness, hippy musings and ‘Ohh Mr Grimsdale’ incompetence.

Some may find this winning but the self-absorption and lack of detail about the actual walk started to nag like the oftdiscussed blisters, especially when we’re treated to chummy ‘bantz’ between Twigger and his companion about passers-by like ‘Did you clock his bird?’

Encountering some people enquiring about their table reservation in a pub, Twigger snorts, ‘I don’t usually give a toss where I sit. I’m too busy rushing through my existence, tearing off chicken legs of experience and spitting the bones out without chewing properly.’

I stayed the course, somewhat grumpily. But in the end, how much you enjoy this curious trip will depend on whether, like me, you like a nice pub table rather than biting off the chicken legs of experience.