Tom Chesshyre's Charming Travelogues

Tom Chesshyre is one of my favourite writers. The first book of his that I read was From Source to Sea. It's an account of a 215-mile-long walk along the river Thames from its source in Trewsbury Mead in Gloucestershire, to the point where it joins the North Sea.

I have a particular fondness for books about walking and hiking, so I knew I was going to enjoy this book, but what caught me was the history and the detail that he wove into his account of the walk.

He's a journalist, so he has a nose for a good story, and he finds something of interest to write about at every point on the journey whether it's a conversation with a fellow traveller or an account of something that happened at that very point beside the Thames five hundred years ago.

Another book of his which involves a long distance walk is Lost in the Lakes, which is his account of a 379-mile-long walk around the Lake District. He set off to walk in a "big wobbly circle" around this dramatic landscape which attracts millions of visitors every year. He writes about the place, the history and the people that he encounters along the way with the warmth and the sense of humour that marks all of books.

While he clearly loves his walks, his other great passion is for trains and train travel. He's written a bunch of books about his travels around Britain and around the world on trains of every kind.

Ticket to Ride is an account of forty-nine unique train journeys in different parts of the world, some lasting a few hours, and others that go on for days. Tom Chesshyre set off to experience train travel in all its variety on rail routes that range from the dramatic to the every day, on trains as vastly different from each other as traditional steam locomotives and bullet trains.

He travels through Kosovo, Macedonia, China, Turkey, Iran, Finland, Russia and America. He takes the toy train to Shimla, he goes on Sri Lanka's Reunification Express, he spends days on The Indian Pacific that goes all the way across Australia, from the Indian Ocean on one side of the country to the Pacific Ocean on the other, while taking shorter train journeys in North Korea, Italy, Poland, Peru, Switzerland, Scotland, England and Lithuania.

This is a narrative that is rich with detail about people and places. What makes it even more interesting is the fact that the author is clearly interested in the local culture, the food, the politics, and the people who make each place what it is.

His other books about trains include: Slow Trains Across Spain, Slow Trains to Istanbul, Slow Trains to Venice, Tales From the Fast Trains, and Slow Trains Around Britain which is his most recent book.