TRAVEL TAKEAWAYS by JULIE WATSON

It’s not often I blog about a book I’m reading. It has to be exceptional or part of a writing or a photography challenge, but in this case it is because I have just discovered a paperback by someone who writes travel articles that really appeal to me, the sort I used to enjoy in the Sunday papers before they turned themselves over to the advertising world.

I found it through Beachy Books, an Isle of Wight publisher whose listings have often included quirky and interesting books. It turns out that Julie Watson is also an Isle of Wight writer, someone I don’t know but someone whom I’d like to meet one day. So, as well as being happy to introduce a travel writer to those here who write on travel, I’m also excited because she’s from my area, a local writer!

Julie’s book is a collection of travel memoirs from her first independent trip to the French Alps to work as a waitress, to later trips to more exotic places like India, Russia, Egypt, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Borneo, to name but a few. And each tale is an anecdote, a story about her trip, not a list of restaurants and hotels, but about the chance meetings that occur on holiday when we open ourselves to new experiences, serendipitous moments that are evoked in exhilarating detail. And all this brought to us in a very personal, authentic prose. I finished the book feeling I’d learned something new about the places and the people.

Above is one of the Contents pages, from which you’ll see that the articles are short, bite-sized, and as the cliché has it “small but beautifully formed”, ideal for dipping into when you have a spare few minutes.

It’s hard to choose a favourite from so many great pieces but I think I’ll opt for Birdsong, an exquisitely crafted piece written in lockdown, a simple tale, yet one that when read, left me with the feeling that I had known that place, and I had known that moment. And I was strangely moved.

Available from all good bookshops and from Amazon, of course.