Anne Mustoe (1933–2009)

The inspiration behind this journey is for Anne Mustoe to travel from the site of Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames in London to the place in Egypt where the original monument came from, Heliopolis. Once again she would travel alone on her bike and to add to the challenge would follow the course of rivers and seas where possible. Her journey will take through four European countries and across the Alps before crossing the Adriatic and heading down towards where Europe meets Aisa; Turkey. The last part of her ride takes her through what is now a very troubled area of the world, as she passes Syria, Lebanon and into Egypt.

This is the first of Anne Mustoe’s books that I have read. She is a pragmatic, no nonsense type of character, who does not let most things phase her. She suffers from a knee injury, is robbed, cycles up and over the Alps and runs out of whisky and gets very wet more times than she cares to remember. She cycles solo most of the time but is joined on occasions by friends. As she rolls along the route, we are told about the people she meets and learns about the history of places that she passes through. The prose is quite matter of fact as Mustoe writes in a straightforward and competent way. It is not the best cycling travel book I have read but makes for enjoyable light reading. Will be reading some of her others, as this was one of three I picked up at the same time. 2.5 Stars… (más)

I am a confirmed armchair bicycle tourist. Anne Mustoe is one of the widely acknowledged great writers in the genre. The one minor disappointment of this book is that Mustoe doesn't ride her bike for the larger part of her travels here. She's probably more disappointed by that than her reader will be, though!

I don't know much about South America. This book was a great fun way to pick up some basics. Mustoe starts and ends her trip in Buenos Aires. She rides southwest to cross the Andes into southern Chile. She then takes buses through Chile to its north, then east through Bolivia, then back southeast to Buenos Aires.

The title captures the themes: she follows Che Guevara's motorcycle route to Chile. Then from Bolivia the theme is the mountain of silver in Potosi. There is much talk of the Spanish conquest and then the nineteenth century independence from Spain and the wars especially where Bolivia loses territory to its neighbors.

I recently read Vaclav Smil's Enriching the Earth, which features the nitrate fields which Chile now includes in its borders. Mustoe sketches quickly the importance of these but just touches on nitrate synthesis. But that is the fun of this kind of book - it seeds so much further exploration!

Will I ever ride that road south from La Quiaca? Probably not! But Mustoe surely expanded my world with her travels, physical and intellectual!… (más)

Anne Mustoe is quite a gutsy woman, who at the age of 54 in 1987 set off on a loaded bike to cycle through various counties in a easterly direction. She used ancient roads as a focus for her trip and seemed to have no experience as a cyclist. She endures all sorts of hardship and does not complain. Not being a cyclist previously, she does not join the usual cycling fraternity complaints of poor driving etc and you get little sense of what it was actually like cycling on some of the roads she used. For the most part she concentrates on the sights and history and the people and clearly gets a huge amount of enjoyment from being accepted and welcomed in small villages and towns. Her sections on Turkey and Pakistan are particularly memorable for these stories of the people who helped her. You get a real sense of her desire to get home by the time she was in the USA, as she rushes through this country in only a few pages. I found this an interesting and enjoyable read and travelogue.… (más)