Status:
Competed
Rating:
4 Stars
Editors Foreword:
Seasoned adventurer Alastair Humphreys pushes himself to his very limits – busking his way across Spain with a violin he can barely play.
In 1935 a young Englishman named Laurie Lee arrived in Spain. He had never been overseas; had hardly even left the quiet village he grew up in. His idea was to walk through the country, earning money for food by playing his violin in bars and plazas.
Nearly a century later, the book Laurie Lee wrote – As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning – inspired Alastair Humphreys. It made him fall in love with Spain – the landscapes and the spirit – and with Laurie’s style of travel. He travelled slow, lived simply, slept on hilltops, relished spontaneity, and loved conversations with the different people he met along the hot and dusty road.
For 15 years, Alastair dreamed of retracing Laurie Lee’s footsteps, but could never get past the hurdle of being distinctly unmusical. This year, he decided to go anyway. The journey was his most terrifying yet, risking failure and humiliation every day, and finding himself truly vulnerable to the rhythms of the road and of his own life. But along the way, he found humility, redemption and triumph. It was a very good adventure.
Quotes & Highlights:
“But I was too hungry to think very deeply. I looked around the plaza, weighing up my chances, and rubbed the bow with rosin to give it grip. You need friction to play beautiful notes.”
“God, it was a relief to let go of what I thought I should be. To just accept who I actually was, vulnerabilities and all. I”
“I am more at peace with myself and the world when I spend an extended period outdoors”
“I now believe there is something even more important than striving for the remarkable. And that is to stop dreaming about an adventure of a lifetime, and instead pursue a lifetime of living adventure through a daily pledge to push myself a little, scare myself now and then and remain curious”
“It is easy to begin but hard to stick at, which is why I respect anyone who has completed a long hike. You learn a lot, someone, by hiking in the hills”
“It is normal nowadays to spend most of our lives inside, temperature-controlled, light-switched, water-softened, air-freshened and double-glazed. We have become like babies in incubators, unable to survive in the world. I only sense the sterility of this when my situation is reversed and I spend so much time outside that going in feels strange once more. I am more at peace with myself and the world when I spend an extended period outdoors.”
“The life that I could still live, I should live and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think”
“When you travel, the world comes real and three-dimensional, impossibly vivid”