Rambles beyond Railways or, Notes in Cornwall Taken A-Foot by Wilkie Collins

We visited the pretty fishing village of Looe: There are so many highlights, and I will share just a few. It was a joy to be allowed to walk alongside them. Columb Major (Excursion to Vale of Mawgan) Redruth to Perranporth (Excursion to Piran Round) It was the start of a 214 mile walking tour – here’s where Wilkie Collins and his friend, the artist Henry Brandling travelled and stayed. The vogage is wonderfully related with such vivid descriptions and a helpful local local boatman coming to life on the page. In 1851 the railway stopped in Plymouth and so travellers had to be ferried across the River Tamar into Cornwall. I am pleased to report that they were a delight. Wow!īut enough gushing enough exclamation marks! What about the contents? What a wonderful thing to do! And so I was holding the same edition that the author himself must have held. And a bookplate at the front advises me that it was found, in tatters, in 1933, restored and then presented to the library. The book I picked up was the original 1851 edition. A travelogue visiting so many places I know so well. Rambles beyond Railways: Notes in Cornwall taken a-foot. So imagine my delight when I found a book by Wilkie Collins in the library’s Cornish room. He will tell you of the grand and varied scenery the mighty Druid relics the quaint legends the deep, dark mines the venerable remains of early Christianity and the pleasant primitive population of the county of Cornwall.” He will speak to you of one of the remotest and most interesting corners of our old English soil. In the first place he is able to tell you something about a part of your own country which is still too rarely visited and too little known. As for his intrinsic claims to your kindness, he has only two that I shall venture to advocate. All that I can say for his outside is, that I have made it as neat as I can-having had him properly thumped into wearing his present coat of decent cloth, by the most competent book-tailor I could find.

He is neither so bulky nor so distinguished a person as some of the predecessors of his race, who may have sought your attention in years gone by, under the name of “Quarto,” and in magnificent clothing of Morocco and Gold. “Will you allow me, reader to follow the custom to which I have just adverted and to introduce to your notice this Book, as a friend of mine setting forth on his travels, in whose well-being I feel a very lively interest.

Rambles beyond Railways or, Notes in Cornwall Taken A-Foot by Wilkie Collins