Author Finds Consonance in Welsh Countryside

A WALK THROUGH WALES by Anthony Bailey (Michael di Capua Books/HarperCollins, $23 hardcover).

At home in London one recent spring, Anthony Bailey--a prolific, thoughtful and elegant English writer, the author of some 17 previous books and a longtime contributor to The New Yorker--found himself seized with what he calls “my annual restlessness . . . a restlessness which can generally be appeased by a long walk.” When Bailey says “long walk,” he doesn’t mean around the block a few times. He is a serious rambler, and this time, to appease his restlessness, he set off on a three-week perambulation of what was for him, at the time, “the closest-to-hand foreign country”: Wales.

Thus we find him heading toward Cardiff by train to begin his trek, assembling, as he goes, his “dribs and drabs of recollection” of things Welsh: “ . . . images of hill-forts and tumbling streams and an irate farmer with a shotgun and a shining-eyed girl called Mair. . . . Welsh Guards, Welsh Fusiliers. Anthracite. Arthur and Merlin. . . . Ugly chapels. Long names with too many consonants. Sheep.”

And then he’s off, the whole length of the country, on shoe leather, up through Caerphilly, The Valleys, Aberystwyth, Llanfihangel-y-Pennant, Harlech, Llyn Cwellyn and finally to Bangor on the edge of the Menai Strait. Along the way he encounters miners and poets, castles and pubs, Welsh patriots and English soldiers, wild dwarf roses and Humbug candies--and certainly sheep, and certainly the consonant-heavy and oft-confusing Welsh language. He is a good reporter, with a good ear for dialogue; he describes both landscape and cityscape evocatively but without stylistic frill; he weaves historical and cultural asides into his text quite seamlessly. If the format of “A Walk Through Wales” is somewhat familiar (and somewhat New Yorkerish)--erudite author with journalistic instincts sees a country informally and up-close, then pens portrait of the place--the content is rich and satisfying.

CYCLING EUROPE: Budget Bike Touring in the Old World by Nadine Slavinski (Bicycle Books, $12.95 paper).

This is a useful, common-sensical guidebook written by a young Cornell University archeology student who has spent several summers doing Europe by bicycle. In addition to general information about the terrain, climate and budget-priced tourist facilities in 13 European nations (one of them, unfortunately, the war-torn former Yugoslavia), she offers detailed itineraries and basic maps for 14 different two-wheel tours, each broken down into daily stages of varying lengths. Slavinski makes an occasional small error (“Bom dia” is Portuguese, not Catalan, for “Good day”), but in general her advice seems sound and up-to-date.

MEXICO FROM THE DRIVER’S SEAT: Tales of the Road from Baja to the Yucatan by “Mexico” Mike Nelson (Scrivener Press/Sanborn’s, $11.90).

Texas-based “Mexico” Mike, who has been driving the highways and back roads of Mexico for some 20 years, writes the annual “Sanborn’s Travelog” (a motorist’s guide to Mexico) and pens a weekly column called “On the Road in Mexico” for the McAllen (Texas) Monitor and the Mexico City News. In other words, when you think of the conjunction of automobiles and that Spanish-speaking nation across the Rio Grande, his name should probably come to mind. He certainly knows the territory; he tells funny, sometimes outlandish stories, and his tips on Mexican driving etiquette, road conditions and the like are useful.

But this collection of Nelson’s columns is rough-and-ready stuff. He writes with more flair than literary style (“As with any festival in Mexico, there’ll be fireworks. Boy, will there be fireworks!”), and it is unclear just how seriously to take his often-enthusiastic recommendations of hotels and restaurants: He closes one column by saying, “Many thanks to Ing. Juan Arturo Lopez Ramos, Director of Tourism in Oaxaca, for his erudite help in my research.” The book is available only from the publisher: Scrivener Press/Sanborn’s, P.O. Box 310, McAllen, Texas 78502; (800) 222-0158.

CARIBBEAN ACCESS: The Top Island Destinations with Bermuda and the Best of the Bahamas (HarperPerennial, $17 paper). Though most of the Access guides deal with individual cities, the unique format of the series--its savvy tone, imaginative graphics and color-coded type (green for beaches and shops, red for restaurants, blue for hotels, black for sights)--lends itself to well to the scattered, varied islands of the Caribbean Sea (and, in Bermuda’s case, the western mid-Atlantic). Don’t seek deep understanding of the region’s people here, or armchair entertainment--but as a guidebook, it’s superb.

BUCK PETERSON’S GUIDE TO INDOOR LIFE by B.R. “Buck” Peterson (Ten Speed Press, $6.95 paper).

Peterson, also author of “The Original Roadkill Cookbook,” is a humorist--sort of a North Woods Dave Barry, but with a bluer collar and rather less wit. (He tells us that he hails, for instance, from “Bee-You-Too-Full Big Babe Lake in northern Minnesota.”) The indoor life he deals with here is that of hotels, conventions and exhibitions, and he offers jocular advice on the etiquette and mechanics of everything from checking into a hotel (and reacting to lost reservations) to justifying trade-show expense accounts. Along the way he assures us that “call brands” in a cocktail lounge are those “whose names can be called loudly across a bar without embarrassment to either the caller or the pourer,” and that “the most important yet often not discussed benefit to eating in your room is the proximity of the toilet”--stuff like that. If you think conventions and trade shows are a blast, you might find Peterson funny.

FESTIVALS & OFFBEAT EVENTS AUSTRALIA by Chris and Karen Wyeth (Kangaroo Press/Seven Hills, $9.95 paper). The Australians obviously like parties, and are obviously extremely inventive in thinking up excuses to have them on a grand scale. Thus the Campbelltown City Festival of Fisher’s Ghost (honoring a specter said to have appeared here in 1826), the Bundanoon Is Brigadoon fete (a town in New South Wales pretends to be Brigadoon for a day), the Darwin Beer Can Regatta (featuring boats made out of same) and the Tweed Banana Festival (in the Tweed Valley), among others. All these and more are included in this lively little book, as are countless music, food and wine festivals, ethnic carnivals and the like.

DOING CHILDREN’S MUSEUMS: A Guide to 265 Hands-On Museums by Joanne Cleaver, revised and expanded (Williamson, $13.95).

This is a collection of index-card-like listings, providing addresses, phone numbers, hours, admission prices and brief descriptions of children’s museums--or museums where children are welcome--all over America. Invaluable for anyone who has young ‘uns about and wants to take them somewhere besides Disneyland or the mall.