Bill Bryson · 1995 · road

Bill Bryson's 1995 farewell tour of Britain, made by bus and train before moving back to America after twenty years. He retraces the route of his first arrival at Dover and works north to John o' Groats, exasperated and delighted in roughly equal measure by roundabouts, tea rooms, hotel breakfasts and a country that cannot see how strange it is.

1. 1
   Dover

   Bryson begins where he first arrived in 1973 - stepping off the night ferry at Dover with nowhere to stay - and finds the town much reduced, which sets the tone for a tour equally full of affection and complaint.

2. 2
   London

   London gets the fond, exasperated treatment: a city he rates as the best in the world for wandering about in, whose inhabitants queue immaculately, apologise to furniture, and have no idea how peculiar any of it looks.

3. 3
   Salisbury

   Through the south-west by bus and branch line, he works over Salisbury and its cathedral close, Stonehenge and the chalk country - and the running theme emerges, that Britain treats its own scenery with baffling casualness.

4. 4
   York

   North through the industrial towns and the Dales to York, where the walls and the Minster get their due and the railway museum gets rather more - and the weather does what it does throughout the book.

5. 5
   Edinburgh

   Edinburgh he loves without qualification, which for this book is unusual - and from there the country begins to empty out as he heads for the top of the map through the Highlands.

6. 6
   John o' Groats

   He ends at John o' Groats, the customary full stop of any journey up Britain, and takes stock of a country he is about to leave - concluding, with some surprise, that he is going to miss almost all of it.