Touring In Europe

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29856, 23 June 1962, Page 3

Touring In Europe

The Road to Lisbon. By Vivian Rowe. Eyre and Spottiswoode, in association with the B.P. Touring Service. 207 pp. The "Highway to the Sun” series describes routes motorists from Britain may use when touring in Europe. Mr Rowe's book, the latest in the series, is much more than a tourist’s guide book: it is a book that gives in fascinating detail the story of a route that is exceptionally rich in history. Meeting the Continent at Cherbourg and travelling south through Normandy and Brittany down the coast of the Bay of Biscay to Spain, the reader travels with princes, pilgrims, and warriors of the ages. In Spain, he finds the marks of the Basques and the Moors, and on to Portugal where to the British tourist the impression of the Peninsular War is ever present.

With great historical knowledge the author combines a fine eye for country, for the beauty of ancient buildings, and for modern development —where it occurs along this ancient route. Mr Rowe, who was with the French Government Tourist Office for 14 years, is an excellent cicerone who will be read with great profit by people proposing to travel the route he deals with in thi s book, and with considerable pleasure by armchair travellers.