The Lazy Man's Guide To Travel Writing

The reasons why I refer occasionally to items from "The Guardian" are: a. it is free online, unlike a certain other "quality" British newspaper; b. it isn't the "Daily Mail"; c. following on from b., I don't therefore have a desire to throw the computer out the window.

Another reason is that it does come up with the odd inspirational piece. Not inspirational in the way that it is written, but inspirational in giving me something to talk about. So it is with a short thing entitled "Spain's best festivals and parties", written by a certain Rachel Dixon who "works for the life & style site" at the paper. What this means is that she gets gigs to go and sample tourism and travel opportunities that few people would ever consider and would still not consider once they have read Rachel's contributions.

The other day, Rachel was enjoying "gourmet horse riding in Andalucía" (and how nomenclaturely correct of the paper to opt for Andalucía, with its c and its accented i, rather than its s and no accent). Never fear, it isn't the horse that is being gourmeted, or at least I don't think it is. As if this wasn't enough travel for one day and for one person, Rachel then departs Andalucía and heads around Spain for her tour of the best festivals and parties.

These, it mainly turns out, are publicity for music concerts. Not boring ones with sombre-looking gents in tuxes and equally sombre-looking ladies in evening gowns but pop, rock, dance and what have you. Best they all are, even if one of them claimed by Rachel to be among the best has never actually taken place before.

We read all this travel-writing stuff and think "I wish I could do a job like that". Gourmet horse riding one day, the best festivals the next day, or even the same day in Rachel's case. But it's the appearance of the not-having-taken-place-yet festival that helps to prove what I have believed for some time. Travel writers don't in fact get gigs to go and sample tourism at all. What they do is spend all day in their studies in Hackney pied-à-terres and look at YouTube.

This may sound as though writers are being rather duplicitous in suggesting that they have been horse riding when the only riding they have been doing is taking the Central Line, but we should applaud them, especially if they work for the life & style site at "The Guardian". Life & style (strangely always ampersanded) in a Guardian style requires attention to carbon emissions. What better than to never leave home but still appear to have, as though you are a current-day Judith Chalmers wishing your readership that they were there but having Photoshopped yourself onto an entire landscape of Andalucía, preferably with the odd gourmet horse or two chewing in the background.

With most of it, as with gourmet horse riding, you can be on pretty firm ground. No one is clearly ever going to do it, as no one ever does anything that is suggested in the travel pages of newspapers. So no one can challenge the accuracy of the report. Not that they would, because the report would be accurate, unless someone had, as a joke, posted gourmet horse riding in the Shetland Islands onto YouTube and called it Andalucía.

The travel-writer's research is today done for him or her. As well as YouTube, there are the likes of Pinterest. What an astonishing resource this is. Just go to the travel & places section (more of the ampersand, note) and a whole world awaits your typing skills to convert the images into someone's next dream holiday. How about Niue for example? Don't know where it is. Nor did I, but I now do, thanks to Pinterest, and studying the photos I could conjure up a world for you of velvety white sands and electric-blue sea (see also Trip Advisor re Puerto Alcúdia).

I wouldn't even need to plagiarise the text. I am quite capable of writing my own, thanks very much. And realising quite how easy this can all be, I have decided to issue my "Lazy Man's Guide To Mallorca", to be published this summer. While I know a fair bit about Mallorca, I can't claim to know it all, but why should I bother spending the petrol money to find out when it's all there on the internet, awaiting my transformation into an indispensable guide for tourists from all good bookshops at the reasonable price of 9.99 euros (IVA included). With any luck, I can find some charitable souls willing to hand over their photos for free as well.

But why stop at Mallorca? My next project will be a guide to the Russian Steppe. Have I ever been to it? Are you kidding? Of course not. I don't even know where it is, but Wikipedia can tell me.

So, thank you, "The Guardian", and thank you, Rachel. A moment's attention paid to Spain's best festivals and parties, and you have shown me the light. And it's on YouTube.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.