The Travel Bookshop in London (as seen in the film Notting Hill) has come up with their Top 10 Travel Books.

I have read 6 of their suggestions. I agree that a Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, The Kon-Tiki Expedition and The Places In Between all deserve to be in the list. However the Ukimwi Road (I love early Dervla, but find her later, cantankerous stuff hard work) and Miles from Nowhere epitomise the tediousness of the vast majority of books about cycle touring. There’s only a few honourable exceptions to this rule: The Hungry Cyclist and Cycling Home from Siberia being amongst them.

Here’s the list of the Top 10 books:

1. Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby
2. The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas by Thor
3. A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck
4. Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn
5. The Ukimwi Road by Dervla Murphy
6. Stasiland – Stories from behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder
7. Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald
8. The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
9. The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
10. Miles from Nowhere by Barbara Savage

Air your thoughts in the comments section below!