A Review by Paddy Tyson
With round the world rides and two-month blasts down the Americas to feed social media becoming commonplace, you may think maximum knarly adventure is what makes a good motorcycle travel book, but you’d be woefully misled if you did.
North to Norway doesn’t feed the author’s ego, rather it provides a great read and an inspiring reason to get out there and rediscover what’s on our European doorstep. It’s exactly 30 years since I rode to NordKapp and it was a delight to have all my own experience rekindled with such wonderfully descriptive prose. This book also made me realise just what I’d missed through travelling too fast and did exactly what a good travel book should; it made me want to return.
Covering a ride from Derbyshire south to Tarifa at the bottom of Spain, and then north to the northern tip of Norway, this is very much a book of two halves. Initially Stephen rides solo down and around Spain on his NT1100 Honda, immersing himself in backcountry life in the way only a solo traveller (and a multi-linguist) can, revelling in Parador accommodation and local cultures.
Then, after a break with family, he embarked on the second half – north to Norway – with an old work colleague who would become close friend after experiencing the Nordic roads together.
There are a selection of small route maps commencing some sections, which are handy, and there are 19 pages of black and white holiday snaps in the middle which add very little because of poor production quality and because the vibrant text already enables you to create all the pictures you need.
If you want tales of daring-do, extricating bikes from mud baths, or dragging them over rocky outcrops, you’ll be sorely disappointed. But if you’d like an engaging travelogue, an easy, beautifully written read that’ll make you grab at atlas to follow the route, this is it, and surely that is the epitome of a good travel book.
£9.99 Paperback (Tregarth Press, March 2025)
292pp
ISBN: 9781916 843 011