“The Road to Little Dribbling” by Bill Bryson – Twenty Years Later

Time may be the one thing that will best us all in the end, but while we're here it could also be heralded as the one thing that prevents stagnation and boredom. With time things, places and people tend to change in one way or another, creating new experiences that keep things interesting.

A lot can change in a country during a period of twenty years, and so Bill Bryson decided to revisit the United Kingdom two decades after his travels that ultimately led him to write Notes from a Small Island.

The premise of this second visit is rather simple: take the two points furthest away from each other in the country, draw a line between them, and try to vaguely follow it while placing a greater focus on visiting the kinds of attractions most tourists won't go for.

Along the way Bryson fills his pages with countless comments, witticisms, tirades, rants, observations, questions... all with his trademark sense of humour.

To begin with, it ought to be mentioned that even though Bryson set his sights on visiting the North of the country, he spends the majority of it in the South, with only around 30 pages out of 500 being dedicated to Wales and Scotland.

Instead of following his “Bryson Line”, he seems to prefer veering left and right and getting lost in the moment. Also, his planning skills left something to desire on occasion... for instance, he visits a town on Sunday only to realize the museum is closed, or decides that 20 pounds is too much to pay for some sort of attraction.

Though peppered with amusing comments, these dead end moments hurt the book while adding nothing to it... after all, wasn't the point of the travel journal to actually visit places and share the experiences?

However, once you get past Bryson's occasional half-heartedness in his approach to the whole voyage, there are a ton of things to be enjoyed here, mainly consisting of his non-stop observations.

The author really has a knack for turning the most trivial into something interesting that will make you react in one way or another. All the thoughts he extrapolates from simple observations of his minimalistic environments and the people in them really turn into what should have been a dull voyage (filled with countryside pubs and local museums) into a comedic adventure.

If you are hoping to actually get a close-up look at the United Kingdom's lesser known corners, then you'll probably be only half-satisfied. Though he does spend a good amount of time giving serious (and sometimes breathtaking) descriptions of the locations he visited, Bryson often breaks off from the narrative to indulge in various grumpy rants about basically all the annoyances we come face-to-face with in daily life.

In my opinion, these rants tend to be rather funny (save for a couple) though they might not be everyone's cup of tea, especially considering their quantity. By the end of it, his angry tirades feel like they're melting into one by sheer virtue of repetition.

In conclusion, while The Road to Little Dribbling may not exactly be the tour-de-force that its predecessor was, it nevertheless remains an enjoyable and humorous travelling book that takes a comedic and grumpy outlook on life in the United Kingdom.

It's definitely a book I can recommend for fans of Bryson as well as those who enjoy travelling the world through the pages of a book.

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Bill Bryson Personal site Bill Bryson is a best-selling author of American origin, being best-known for his humoristic works, often touching upon scientific themes or the English language itself. He lived in Britain for most of his life, where he skyrocketed in popularity with the publication of Notes from a Small Island, and a bit later, A Short History of Nearly Everything.