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Continuing with the fantastic response I have had from travel
writers, this month I interviewed Polly Evans, author of
It’s Not About The Tapas.
Polly escaped her job in an office to take off on a bicycle
tour around Spain. The result was her first book ‘It’s Not
About The Tapas’. It was shortlisted for the WHSmith People’s
Choice Travel Writing Award. The following year she set off
for New Zealand - this time on a motorbike and her second book,
‘Kiwis Might Fly’ was published. Her third book ‘Fried Eggs
With Chopsticks’ tells of her sometimes desperate battle to
tour China by public transport and her fourth book ‘On a Hoof
and a Prayer’ sees her learning to ride horses in Argentina.
Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman, her fifth book, takes her to the
wonderful wilderness of Canada’s Yukon Territory, where she
learns to drive a dog sled. When Polly is not on the road,
she lives in London.
What authors have influenced your writing?
It’s hard to pinpoint just one or two – I try to read as
extensively as I can. I’d also be wary of saying how they’ve
influenced me. To say you’re influenced by a writer suggests
that there may be a little of them in your work, and I don’t
think I’d dare put myself anywhere near the level of the
writers I most enjoy. But for what it’s worth, travel books I
have enjoyed include Robert Twigger’s Voyageur, William
Fiennes’s The Snow Geese, A.A. Gill’s Previous Convictions,
Martha Gellhorn’s Travels with Myself and Another, Peter
Hessler’s River Town, Lucas Bridges’s Uttermost Part of the
Earth, Terry Darlington’s Narrow Dog to Carcassone, Eric
Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush… so you can see, this
is a hopeless task. They are a diverse bunch, and my writing’s
nowhere near any of them.
What is the best and worst thing about being an author?
I love being able to concentrate my energy on a project that
really, genuinely interests me. For me, the travel is a small
part – I also love the research, reading up on a country and
its history and culture. For me that greatly enriches the
experience of travel. And it’s always wonderful to be able to
meet and talk to people from different parts of the globe and
entirely different cultures. Another plus point, from my point
of view, is working from home. There are plenty of people who
can’t stand the loneliness, but I really like the fact that I
don’t have to commute, don’t have to dress up to go to the
office, and can work my own hours. Which leads on to the bad
point…when I’m working at home on a project that really
interests me, I sometimes find I work for far too long. There
are definitely times when I need to get out more.
What are your other interests?
After a long day sitting at the computer all on your own,
you’re driven to find a release. The way I see it, an author
has two options: alcohol or exercise. I try to select the
latter as often as I can manage. I run, swim or cycle most
days (my book on Spain,
It’s Not About the Tapas,
was about cycling round Spain and I still ride the same bike).
I’m also a keen photographer, which fits well with
travel-writing.
Are you currently working on a book?
My book about dogsledding in the Yukon,
Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman,
was published in February. That was a really wonderful trip,
and I became hooked on the far north. So now I’m writing a
book for Bradt Guides about all sorts of amazing things you
can do in the far north in winter, from dogsledding to
northern lights to extraordinary hotels to visiting reindeer
herders to searching for Santa.
Many writers describe themselves as ‘plot’ or ‘character’
writers. Which one are you?
Gosh, I have absolutely no idea. I’ve never thought about it.
Maybe that description works better for fiction than for
travel where the ‘plot’ and characters tend to introduce
themselves and assert their personalities whether the author
wants them too or not – I’ve never yet been on a journey that
has gone entirely as planned. So I wouldn’t say that I fit
into either or those categories.
You have travelled extensively. What is the best thing and
the worst thing about travelling?
The worst
thing is when they make you take your shoes off going through
airport security. The best thing is the tremendous mental
stimulation of being somewhere entirely new and entirely
different, meeting people with whom I have little,
superficially, in common but finding that the same things make
us laugh, that we all have the same concepts of good and bad,
and that really we’re quite similar after all. I love to find
out how a country or a region’s past has shaped its present,
and to find out what makes its people tick. For example, I was
in Chukotka, in the very far north-east of Russia a few weeks
ago. That area experienced extreme poverty after the fall of
the Soviet Union – the people were literally starving. In 2000
Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea Football
Club, became Chukotka’s governor and invested tens of millions
of pounds in building new hospitals, schools and houses. The
joy and pride that the Chukotkan people take in showing
visitors round their new facilities – at the same time as
explaining their subsistence lifestyle of hunting and trapping,
by which many still live – was really quite heartwarming.
I love
travelling to places I know well, too, such as Spain. I lived
in Plasencia in Extremadura for a year as part of my
university course (my degree is in Spanish) and travelled a
lot around the country. Then my first book,
It’s Not About the Tapas,
was about cycling round Spain. So travelling to Spain is
almost like visiting a second home – I understand the language,
and I can relate to the culture, so that’s a totally different,
more relaxed travel experience. |
