The Road to Little Dribbling- Bill Bryson

***^1/2/*****                                                                                                                                                     Travel

The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island

Bill Bryson

About twenty years ago Bill Bryson moved to America, his native country, after having lived in Britain for more than two decades. At that time, he decided to travel across Britain in public transports to gather the feel of the country that he loved dearly. Notes from a Small Island emerged from these travels. I read this book a couple of years back and noted that ‘It’s the funniest book I’ve read.’ 

Bill Bryson returned to Britain after two decades. He decided to take the roads of the country once again as he wanted to see the changes that had come about in those years. And also, because his agent wanted him to write another book on Britain. This time he traveled across the country from Bognor Regis in south to Cape Wrath in north, which according to him is the longest straight distance on land from one point to other, the line never crossing the sea. He did not confine himself to this route-that he christened ‘Bryson Line’- but zigzags across it, visiting many towns and villages strewn around, to the east and to the west.

This book is as funny as Notes from a Small Island, if not funnier. I need not have fretted after reading  Notes from a Small Island, that Bryson has written the funniest book that one can write and he will not better it in future. The most endearing feature of the book is Bryson’s amazingly delightful description of English countryside. Bryson has been a past president of CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England) and his sincere and zealous love for English countryside is amply evident in the book. In the book he writes about innumerable small villages and towns in UK. He paints a fetching picture of these quaint old villages with one main street comprising few essential shops: a green grocer, a butcher, an ironmonger and perhaps a book shop. He walks many treks around almost each place he visits. He writes forthrightly on what he feels is most obnoxious in these places and in a magically charming prose, praises the place to his heart’s content when he falls in love with its beauty. He digs up information about buildings, parks, palaces, family mansions, museums, and people associated with these. He presents these facts in a most effortless prose replete with his trademark humour. He digresses often in the narrative as he recounts his encounters with strangers on the roads, shop assistants, fellow travelers, his opinion on Microsoft’s penchant for updates, his wife’s obsession with shopping, hair growing in his nose and ears, his increasing amnesia as he grows old, his experience in restaurants with tardy service, and myriad such encounters. Each is delivered in his stunningly unique, mirth and laughter evoking, ridiculously hyperbolic prose, all in a sweet and suave language. I have visited England a couple of times and have experienced the magic of English countryside. I feel, if I had read this book before my visits, I could have planned and extracted more fun from my tour. Bryson does not spare English character as he mercilessly ridicules it again and again. But he is equally generous with his praise, which seems genuine and heartfelt.

This is a joyful book. It is what one expects from Bryson. He does not disappoint you on any page. Other than a wholesome entertainment, book sates a couch-traveler's appetite for English countryside, in addition to providing many references for promisingly rewarding trips to innumerable villages and trekking routes in the country. I am sure Bill Bryson has ideas about many more such books in his incomparably fertile mind. I eagerly await each and every one the them.