Thread: AULRO Book Club: 'On the Road'

I was only minus 9 in 1957

"Round the world on a wheel"
"Being the narrative of a bicycle ride of nineteen thousand two hundred and thirty-seven miles through seventeen countries and across three continents by five young Englishmen"

"with one hundred illustrations"

J.F. Fraser, London, 1899

One of the fascinating aspects of this book was the almost total lack of roads away from towns (outside of Europe anyway). At the end of the nineteenth century, if you travelled long distance, you went by train. Their trip started in London, then went across Europe and Russia into Persia, to India and through Burma to China, across to Shanghai, boat to Japan, across Japan, boat to the USA, then across the US, and finally boat back to the UK.

John

Originally Posted by Jamo

After reading this thread. I splurged on a 50th anniversary copy of 'First Overland'. Great book. It came with an audio cd of the book with the story told by Tim Slessor.

Found this in the USENET group alt.fan.landrover :-

Something of a blatant plug, I'm afraid, but I'll justify it by saying
it's a public service to those who (like me) were inspired into
Land-Rover ownership by Tim Slessor's book (now republished by Signal
Books) of the 1955 Oxford & Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition from
London to Singapore.

The Expedition's financial viability was only assured when David
Attenborough commissioned Antony Barrington-Brown ('BB') to make 3
films for the BBC's Travel and Exploration Unit. *With the BBC on
board, they could get the big-name sponsorship that meant the
expedition could go ahead. *Unfortunately, with no home video recorders
available in the late 50s, the film (once broadcast) was lost from
view. *Now BB has allowed me to re-master it for DVD viewing, with him
and Tim providing a commentary, and interviews with Nigel Newbery, Pat
Murphy, Adrian Cowell and Sir David Attenborough.

PAL versions are now available through www.teeafit.co.uk/firstoverland,
and I'll try to get them out to you for Christmas. *An NTSC version
(for North America, Japan and the Carribean) is also in production, but
there's been a holdup which will delay them until after Christmas, I'm
afraid.

GRAEME ALDOUS
Teeafit Sound & Vision, Yorkshire

I think I'll be ordering a copy. But who's interested in having a quick show of interest on how many members are interested, and then seeing if we can get a discount for a bulk order (still to be indevidually shipped). Another option would be for www.aulro to enter an arrangement whereby the site becomes a reseller, we pay the retail price, but the Dave gets a cut to continue funding the site.

I'll post this in General chat too and see what response we get.

- Michael2