Novel ways to T ravel The books we love can provide deep connections to the places we visit, says travel writer and Trinity graduate Pól Ó Conghaile I ’m a writer with a reading problem. When I pick up a book, all it takes is a few paragraphs for my mind to wander. A captivating sentence, or image, grabs my imagination by the neck. The words come to life; the scenes carry me away. By the time my eyes get back to the page, minutes may have passed. Progress can be slow. It wasn’t always this way. I majored in English Literature at Trinity, and showed up early for my Arts degree. I ducked into the Lecky Library between Freshers’ Week festivities and walks in the city. I had energy. I devoured books with pace and purpose. Reading felt like a task I could complete. As my degree (and life) went on, of course, that changed. “The more I walk, the less I know why,” Ma Jian wrote of his travels in Red Dust: A Path Through China . The more I read, the less I seemed to… well, know. Now, books pick me up and carry me away, rather than the other way around. Today, I’m a travel writer and editor. It’s more than two decades since I graduated, and I’ve been privileged to travel all over the world. But I’ve never been in a destination as inspirational as the places a great piece of writing can take me. I’ve even made time to search out places I’ve read about in fiction - landscapes, streets, roads, beaches, bars or restaurants. I’m far from alone. Since my days reading English at Trinity, literary tourism has become a growing trend in travel. More and more readers and book clubs are seeking to go beyond the pages of their books. This isn’t new. Fiction and poetry have always inspired our travels – think of Wordsworth wandering lonely as a cloud in the Lake District; or pilgrims visiting Emily Dickinson’s homestead in Amherst. When I mention the Orient Express train, what book and author spring to mind? Now, however, travellers are seeking out more experiential, immersive trips. Stuffy sight-seeing and glass display cases feel less immediate and engrossing than ‘like a local’ tours, where visitors can get under the skin of cities and communities. And a new generation of festivals, interactive museums, neighbourhood walking tours, websites and online maps has sprung up to service that. Think of Jane Austen’s Hampshire, Zadie Smith’s London or García Márquez’s Cartegena. In Ireland, the Patrick Kavanagh Centre in Inniskeen, Co Monaghan has gotten a €1m reboot, with interactive displays and walking and cycling trails taking in landmarks like the Inniskeen Road and Billy Brennan’s barn. There is a CS Lewis trail in Belfast, and the Seamus Heaney HomePlace has breathed new life into Bellaghy, Co Derry. Last summer, I drove to the arts and interpretive centre’s new Open Ground venture, which sees display panels and audio posts installed at places that inspired Heaney. At The Strand at Lough Beg, I listened to him read the poem of that name, looking out on same hazy lake “like a dull blade with its edge / Honed bright”. It felt like I was in the real world, and his world, at once. When walking or working in Dublin, I often take shortcuts through Trinity’s campus. I see the lines of visitors queuing for the Old Library and Book of Kells, and it strikes me that they are literary tourists too. In some cases, fictional worlds have spawned real-life attractions. London’s 221b Baker Street first opened as the Sherlock Holmes Museum in 1990. Transylvania’s Bran Castle is overrun with visitors, but links with a bloodsucking count are tenuous at best. In Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk conceived of the Museum of Innocence together with his 2008 novel of the same name – its displays contain items described in the book, including 4,213 cigarette butts. You can even hear the author’s voice on the audio guide.
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