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This is not a book about trains but about the variety of Spain. The bestselling author Christopher Howse makes ten great railway journeys that explore the interior of the peninsula, its astonishing landscapes and ancient buildings. The focus is the way the Spanish live now: their habits, streets, characters, stories - and quite a bit about their eating and drinking.Christopher Howse has been travelling around Spain for 25 years, and has now made a 3,000 mile circumnavigation by train from the top of the Pyrenees - through the vulture-haunted wilds of Extremadura and the Spaghetti Western deserts of the south, to the ancient hilltop city of Cuenca and beyond. On the way he meets troglodytes, visits a city ruined by an earthquake, runs into a dancing lion, stumbles across a body-snatching plot and tries out a recipe for acorn pie. An entertaining exploration of a much-loved country, The Train in Spain gives a fascinating and entirely original portrait of a strange land at a time of great change.
List of contents
1. Canfranc to Montserrat (via Jáca and Zaragoza) 2. Barcelona to Betanzos (via Tudela, Sahagún and Monforte) 3. Zamora to Zafra (via Cáceres) 4. Mérida to Cabeza del Buey (via Medellin) 5. Seville to Granada (via Osuna) 6. Guadix to Chinchilla (via Lorca and Murcia) 7. Cuenca to Valencia 8. Tortosa to Medinaceli (via Tarragona and Calatayud) 9. Bilbao to Leon (via Cervera) 10. Burgos to Madrid (via Aranda)
Report
On his 3,000 mile trip around Spain, [Christopher Howse] is less benevolent than Michael Palin and, much more interestingly, a blend of two great travel writers, the magisterial literary flâneur Norman Douglas and the romantically nostalgic Norman Lewis Iain Finlayson The Times
