TOM CHESSHYRE is the author of eleven travel books that have taken him from Hull to Tripoli via assignments in North Korea, Nepal, India, the Falkland Islands, St Helena, Colombia and Iceland. He has contributed to the The Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The New European, The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. His magazine work has been for National Geographic Traveller, The Critic, Geographical and Condé Nast Traveller.
On his travels he has been hijacked in Africa, travelled by cargo ship round the Maldives, met tornado-chasers in America and followed in the footsteps of Graham Greene in Haiti.
His latest book is Lost in the Lakes: Notes from a 379-Mile Walk Around the Lake District in which he travels to Penrith by train and sets forth on a giant loop around the park using the sixteen principal lakes as the focus rather than the ‘Wainwright’ peaks (though he pops up a few along the way, too). The idea is to to show a new way around the Lakes that suits the casual rambler while taking in key places such as Keswick, Cockermouth, Coniston, Bowness, Ambleside and Grasmere.
Along the route he talks to scores of people about the Lake District and learns about burning issues regarding second home and holiday homes causing many young locals to move out, the effect of climate change (the risk of terrible flooding), the damage to staffing levels caused by Brexit, and pollution from dreadful blue-green algae in some lakes.
But it’s not all doom and gloom! This is a love letter to the Lakes with stays in bothies, shepherd’s huts and old climbing hotels, enjoying the camaraderie of fellow hikers and plotting a route that often touches on remote places tourists rarely visit, while engaging with the ghosts of the Romantic Poets of old and letting ‘happenchance lead the way’.
His previous book was Park Life: Around the World in 50 Parks in which he describes a ‘journey’ remembering parks he has visited in cities during 25 years as a travel writer. He is inspired to embark on this ‘voyage of the imagination’ (calling on old notebooks and photographs) after falling in love with his local park in London – Richmond Park – during the Covid lockdowns.
Before that, Slow Trains Around Spain: A 3,000-Mile Adventure on 52 Rides recounts a trip around Spain in a big wobbly S-shape beginning in Catalonia and continuing to Aragon, along the north coast to Galicia, south to Madrid and Extremadura, through the middle to Valencia, and down south again via Benidorm, Granada, Malaga, Torremolinos and Ronda to Seville. What emerges is a picture of the country seen through the carriage windows on a series of clattering rides, encounters aplenty thrown in.
Prior to that, his book Slow Trains to Venice: A 4,000-Mile Adventure Across Europe is another train travelogue from London to Venice via France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria – at a time when Europe, with Britain on the cusp of departure and populist movements growing, appeared at a turning point.
Earlier came From Source to Sea: Notes from a 215-mile Walk Along the River Thames, recounting walking the length of England’s longest river a month after Britain’s referendum to leave the European Union. His other books include Ticket to Ride: Around the World on 49 Unusual Train Journeys, Gatecrashing Paradise: Misadventures in the Real Maldives, A Tourist in the Arab Spring, Tales from the Fast Trains: Europe at 186mph, How Low Can You Go? Round Europe for 1p Each Way (Plus Tax), and To Hull and Back: On Holiday in Unsung Britain.
He contributed a chapter about crossing the border into Libya to The Irresponsible Traveller: Tales of Scrapes and Narrow Escapes, a collection of travel stories published by Bradt in 2014. His Times article about Nepal recovering from the devastating 2015 earthquake appears in The Times Companion to 2017. He helped with the research for Robert Low’s W. G. Grace: An Intimate Biography and for Colin Smith’s biography Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist.
Chesshyre lives in Mortlake in London.