The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter

• Paperback - 01 June, 2002 - St. Martin's Griffin
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• By: Tim Moore
• ISBN: 0312300476

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About this book

Has there ever been a funnier man to travel Europe, and return to tell about it, than Tim Moore? Doubtful. Certainly not the man who spawned the concept of the Grand Tour, that mainstay of young 17th- and 18th-century English aristocrats sent around Europe to be cultured but who usually spent more time in bawdy depravity than in cathedrals. That is Thomas Coryate, who walked to Venice and back in 1608. Coryate was the first man to take the trip for pleasure rather than commerce and with the specific intention of boasting on his return (in fact, he penned the first travelogue). Moore follows Coryate's footsteps from France to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and home again, but with a few unusual props of his own--an absurd billowing purple velvet suit and a clapped-out 1980 Rolls Royce that proved impossible to park on medieval streets. (After the pompous car offends a French peasant, Moore cooks up endless versions of "This is not my car..." fibs.)

Remarkably, Moore finds that not much has changed since the slightly short man in tights wandered the continent. The city walls and medieval alleys look as if knaves could be lurking close by, while the single-track stone bridges, grand chateaux, and humble villages he sees were ancient even in Coryate's day. Moore is even able to find the places of torture Coryate describes so gleefully, including the unmarked round stone "on which if any banckerupt do sit with his naked buttocks three times in some public assembly, all his debts are ipso-facto remited." Of course, not everything is the same--while there are still picnickers on the roof of Milan's cathedral, there are also mobile phones, and bowling is now considered an art in Italy. Coryate got himself into all sorts of scrapes with his pretentiousness, belligerent arrogance, and eye for the ladies. Moore is equally adept at slapstick, which he tells with self-deprecating humor--playing James Bond at a casino in Baden-Baden, pilfering grapes in homage to Coryate--and he's just as much a cheapskate with his pan-European survey of pizza parlors and MacDonald's bathrooms. In some fantastic fluke of time, Coryate finally found his perfect travel partner in Moore, and the result is a hilarious jaunt through Europe, past and present, that's not to be forgotten or, for that matter, repeated. --Lesley Reed

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Reviews by readers

I loved it!

I listened to the audiobook -- Michael Wade nailed the sarcasm perfectly. As for the British references, I got many of them ("Frank Butcher glasses, Grant Mitchell coat, 'I pulled up and there was Pat Butcher at reception ...', etc. - it helps to have been an eastenders addict!), and was able to gloss over the ones I didn't as the context often came through anyway.

Slumming the Grand Tour

During the 17th century, and up to the time of the French Revolution, it was fashionable among young Englishmen of means to embark on a Grand Tour of the continent for the purpose of intellectual enlightenment or, more likely, just to wallow in the fleshpots and taverns. One of the first to record his experiences was Thomas Coryate, who made the 5-month roundtrip from his Somerset home to Venice in 1608. His travelogue was subsequently published as "Coryats Crudities" in 1611. In the autumn and early winter of 2000, author Tim Moore retraced Coryate's route, and tells us all about it in THE GRAND TOUR.

Moore's outbound route takes him to Venice via Montreuil, Amiens, Paris, Fontainebleau, Nevers, Lyon, Chamb�ry, Mont Cenis, Turin, Milan, Cremona, and Padua. Homeward bound, Tim transits Garda, Bergamo, Como, Spl�gen Pass, Chur, Zurich, Basel, Strasbourg, Durlach, Heidelberg, Worms, Mainz, Frankfurt, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, Emmerich, Nijmegen, Dordrecht, and Zierikzee.

Any travel narrative is made invariably more entertaining if spiced with tales of hardship. Moore's is no exception, though his travails were largely self-imposed. Choosing to journey in shabby style, he purchased a clapped-out, 1980 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow for 4,750 pounds sterling, with a subsequent 2,186 in necessary repairs to make it roadworthy and presentable. By the end of his Grand Tour, after 3,142 miles, the Roller had reduced the author to pitiful whimpering. Frugal by nature, or the acquisition of wheels having reduced him to penury, or both, Moore spends most nights either sleeping in his car or in fleabag hotels that barely reach the level of "budget accommodations". Personal hygiene was often maintained by a dip in the local, public swimming pool. The tone of much of his adventure is well represented by his decision to emulate Coryate and walk the 50 kilometer Mainz-Frankfurt leg. Thus:

"The shoes were becoming an issue. I thought the idea was that they would mould themselves to the shape of my foot, but their plastic rigidity meant the process was being reversed. I'm not sure if it is possible to limp on both legs, but as it started to get dark ... I gave it my best shot." Later, in his hotel room:

"Peeling away my socks was more like removing a dressing ..."

Despite elements of Tim's adventure which perhaps make it more resemble Napoleon's retreat from Moscow or the Bataan Death March, his dryly-witty commentary makes THE GRAND TOUR eminently readable. And I'm ever delighted to encounter British slang: knackered (exhausted), bog (toilet), ponce (dandy, to strut), neck-down (drink). My chief complaint, which increasingly annoys me the more travel essays I read, is that there's no photo section. Perhaps publishers think the inclusion of such would render a book too pricey for the average reader.

A fitting conclusion is the Epilogue, which summarizes Coryate's life after his return. After struggling to get his book published in the face of ridicule from his social betters, he left England again in 1614, and became the first European since Alexander to walk the 3,300 miles from Jerusalem to India. Dying in 1617 at age forty, he's buried in an uninscribed, domed sarcophagus near Surat marked on East India Company charts, and still labeled on current maps, as "Tom Coryat's Tomb".

Rubbish

I was going to sell my copy until I discovered that used copies were listed for 42 cents. That tells you all you need to know about this worthless book!

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