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Anne Mustoe read Classics at Cambridge and was the headmistress of a girls' school in Suffolk until 1987, when she left her job and embarked on her first solo journey around the world by bicycle. She is an established travel writer with a substantial following who lectures regularly on her adventures.
Sixty-year-old former headmistress Anne Mustoe straps her panniers on for a second global cycle ride from East to West. Her first journey, in the opposite direction, formed her previous book, A Bike Ride. Lone Traveller follows ancient travel and trade routes from London to South America, across the Australian desert, the Karakoram highway to Turkey, and across southern Europe - Italy, France, Spain and back to London. In this trip, spanning 15 months, Mustoe concentrates on the practicalities of such an undertaking, partially in response to the questions most frequently asked of her on luggage, language difficulties, budgets and solitude. A meticulous writer and planner, she even provides lists of the contents of her panniers as appendices. But the beauty of the book is the sense of an 'ordinary' person doing what she has done, with no special level of fitness, coupled with not even a clue how to mend a puncture. Her portraits of the people of remote Amazon villages, of rural Australian farmers, or Tibetan shepherds are enchanting, warm, but always underpinned by a strong historical, literary and factual basis. Illuminated by colour photos taken mostly by the author, Lone Traveller will undoubtably spawn a new wave of cyclists along this ambitious trail. (Kirkus UK)
