Springtime in Britain: An 11,000 Mile Journey through the Natural History of Britain from Land's End to John o' Groats

Springtime in Britain: An 11,000 Mile Journey through the Natural History of Britain from Land's End to John o' Groats
Edwin Way Teale
Published by Dodd, Mead & Company, New York in 1970
ISBN 0-396-06209-1
406 pages, illustrated (author's photographs)

My Anniversary book (45th wedding anniversary) quite captured me and I started to read it that very day and completed it today. I have since learned that the author, Edwin Way Teale, is a Publitzer Prize Winner for his books on seasons in North America wherein he basically did the same as the book Springtime in Britain. Traveled the length and breadth of the area describing the flora and ornithology of the area including the geologic disposition. His writing is somewhat breathless; it is very difficult to put the book down between chapters. He draws in the historical context as well which is very apt in Britain with its ancient history.

The book is written as 36 chapters with each chapter representing a particular area of the country upon which they concentrated for an interval of several days or even a week on occasion. The names chosen for the chapter depict the contents of that chapter. He did not visit any record depositories because this was to be a nature book filled with the sights and sounds of Britain.

Why did he choose to write such a book? When I learned that he was a Publitzer Prize winner for his seasons in America, I thought perhaps he was simply carrying on the theme to the British Isles but as we arrive at Cheshire we learn that his son David had been stationed possibly in this general area during the Second World War with the American troops. His son died in France following the Normandy Invasion. Because their son could not say exactly where he was they could not know for sure but the flora and ornithology which he described in his letters most resembled this area. Then further as we reach West Yorkshire, the author reveals that his father had been an emigrant to the United States having been born in this Riding of Yorkshire and so his interest became more personal as he remembered the tales of his father's childhood and searched for momentos of that earlier life. One wonders if he would have undertaken his 11,000 mile journey through Britain were it not for the personal connection. Only the author could clarify that and I suspect such evidence is lost to time. But other than the short personal reflections, the author and his wife keep steadily to the task of revealing Britain to their readers.

The book is dedicated to his wife and one of their deviations from the trip is his wife's illness near the beginning. A bad cold for his wife had turned to pneumonia and they rested at Tunbridge Wells where she regained her strength and so the journey continued on again from this point as her health returned after a week's stay there.

My favourite parts of the book were written about the areas that I had seen whilst on our tour of Britain but he left me quite breathless to see the rest that I had not yet seen. I think this book will be our building block for our own tour of England itself and later Scotland when we attend the Routledge Reunion in 2014. It seems a long way away but the time passes so quickly when one is planning a trip down to the minute details that the time is soon upon you. We have already begun our planning but will keep the book close as we look at the various areas for in 10,000 miles they crossed over many of the areas that we too will visit.

They began their trip at the end of March after an ocean voyage from New York City to Southampton where they rented a car (following a short lesson on driving in Britain) and then drove to Land's End to begin the glorious trek to John o' Groats. Even the history of John o' Groats was explained in the pages and I shall leave that for all the future readers to discover rather than reveal it here.

They did not travel through the Winterbourne Valley to any great extent and missed the road up through the Wallops into Hampshire which has its own secret beauty but overall they visited so many individual areas of England. At Oxford they were very close to this area but always I found that around each bend of the road the landscape changed. The housing was different, the dividers in the fields and even the shape and type of farm animal was variable as one crossed from one side to the other and from bottom to top to bottom once again.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone setting off the travels the highways of Britain. It is an older book now and life has moved on but surprisingly there is so much the same because it is an ancient country which holds dear the traditions of the old blending it with the new so that it is almost seamless and not gauche as one drives from an old area to a new area.