BETWIXT: Europe: 04/11/2007

Monday 5 November 2007

As may be clear

The view from Bad Ragatz

I am writing. Betwixt's quest begins again soon, but for now the journey in between is one of words not footwork. I'm reading in preparation for Switzerland and Germany, and I'm in search of a Grail Sword to scythe the book text that grows daily: I''ve written seventy pages and haven't got anywhere near Paris yet.

Robin

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The route to date:

. . . Pre-Trip
France - May

May 14-15 Calais
May 16 Boulogne
May 17 Montreuil-sur-mer
May 18 Abbeville
May 19-20 Amiens
May 21 Breteuil
May 22 Clermont
May 23 St. Leu
May 24 St. Denis
May 25-28 Paris
May 29 Fontainebleu
May 30 Montargis

France/Italy June

June 1 Briare
June 2 Nevers
June 3 Moulins
June 5-6 Lyon
June 7 Tour du Pin
June 8-9 Chambéry
June 10 La Chambre
June 11 Lansleburg, Val Cenis
June 12 Lansleburg, Val Cenis
June 13 Rivoli (Italy)
June 14-15 Turin
June 16 Vercelli
June 17-18 Milan
June 19-20Lodi
June 21
Pizzighettone
June 22-23Cremona
June 24-25Mantua
June 26 Lignano
June 27 Este
June 28-July 1 Padua
July 2 Pausa for Proustian Remembrance
Tom spent six weeks in Venice: I returned to a library, because I simply didn't know enough. Now armed with Byron, I return
August 7 Padua
August 8-12 Venice

August 13-28, across Northern Italy with a wounded Mac, which broke down eventually in the Swiss Town of Bad Ragatz. The stories of those places are for recollection in tranquility. Or I'll do them again, some day.

August 15 (2010) I start again...Thusis, Switzerland
August 20 Thusis
August 21 Splugen
August 22 Ems - Chur
August 23 Chur
August 24 Bad Ragaz
August 25 Zurich
August 26 Zurich
August 27 Towards Baden

August 28 Brucke

August 29 Rheinfelden

August 30 Basel

September 1-3 Strasbourg

September 4 Heidelburg

September 6Baden-Baden

September 8 Speyer

September 10 Worms

September 12Mainz

September 22 Frankfurt

September 24 Bingen

September 26 Bacharach

Oberwesel

September 29 St Goar

October 1Boppard

October 6 Back to Frankfurt

Now:
Koblenz
Andernach
Konigswinter
Bonn
Cologne
Dusseldorf
Duisburg
Rees
Emerich
Nijmegen
Tiel
Gorinchem
Dordrecht

Middleburg

Vlissigen

Beginners start here, for The Times' view
Or here for Day One

About BETWIXT: Europe

May 14. 400 years ago today an under employed Englishman whose London drinking friends included William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, John Donne and the teenage Prince of Wales, set out alone on a walking trip across Europe. Thomas Coryat, a Somerset-born bachelor of 32, began his trip in Calais after a nauseous crossing of the English Channel. He travelled, mostly by foot, up to Paris, down through Lyon, across the Alps into Italy, then made for Venice where he was to stay for a month and a half. The return journey took the traveller through Switzerland, Germany and Holland. On October 3rd Coryat returned to London after a three-day boat journey from Flushing on the Dutch coast, bringing with him news of a great new Italian invention: the fork.

FULLER DETAILS

Robin Hunt was born in London in 1958. He has lived in London, Cardiff, New York, Budapest and Ljubljana. A writer and photographer, he's worked for The Guardian, Observer, Sunday Telegraph, Times, Wired, Management Today amongst many newspapers and magazines. He was Associate Editor of Wired UK, and Head of New Media at The Guardian. His consulting clients included: Time Out, the Design Council, Frieze magazine and the Photographers' Gallery in the UK; MTV, Microsoft, Sun, Con-Edison and Pyramid in the US. Author with Francesca de Châtel of Retailisation, a study of the relationship of space and retail opportunity. He has been a visiting Professor at City University. Always he is completing a first novel, Not Everything That Flies, based on his experiences in Hungary, Romania and Slovenia (where he was the recipient of a PEN grant) between 2003 and 2005. In 2008 he began a doctorate on the mediation of ideas about terror; last spring he was the author of copycats - digital consumers in the online age. Currently he is listening to Jose Feliciano. His documentary about the readers at the British Library, produced by Vera Frankl, airs on Radio 4 on July 21.

Why Betwixt?

BETWIXT Is one of Thomas Coryat's favourite words. It sums up this project as well: I am not simply following Coryat, I'm exploring the histories and myths of the cities and towns he visited, and enjoying their moment now. I am genuinely in between - not reporter, nor pampered tourist; not historian, not entirely uninformed, I'm travelling with a Memory, a Memory Stick, and an openness to new Memories.
Betwixt def: Between, in the various senses of that word a) of local position lit and fig b) of time c) of other relations 2. among 3. Between whiles, at intervals, now and then…,