In Pursuit of Spring (Edward Thomas)

In Pursuit of Spring
Edward Thomas

A cycling journey from near where I live in south London to where I was born in Bridgwater and on to the nearby Bristol Channel. Written in 1913 by a poet (among other literary roles) who unfortunately was killed at the Battle of Arras in 1918. There are a lot of references to where or my family have lived an visited especially at the start and ends of the journey. I won't list them all here. It's an interesting read with very detailed descriptions of where he cycles through. Indeed the descriptions are so detailed that he must have stopped frequently to note them all. Although there are a lot of similar descriptions and back then certain flowers and rookeries must have covered the countryside. Which is quite likely. The author is also a reviewer critic and does go off on multi page analysis of different authors and poets sometimes fairly critically. Maybe because of this I enjoyed the first half more than the second where I felt he was using the story to publish his views on others and was very dismissive of certain towns and people he meets which comes over to me as superior arrogance. Similarly condescending when writing about local characters. Descriptions of churches are interesting although he does go on about inscriptions of those who are buried in churchyards. The descriptions are bit strange as now he would have written about the WWI memorials in each village churchyard that lists so many of the local men (boys) killed in the war that also took Thomas. The only reference to soldiers is French ones who died locally. Despite my reservations towards the end I mostly enjoyed the book and maybe I'll follow the journey by bike some spring time...