Task 6: Travel Literature

This week, I am going to ask you to experiment in a genre usually associated with non-fiction (although there have also been plenty of fictional accounts): travel literature.

Just like the others this term, your task will consist of two parts; however, unlike the other tasks, which will predominantly deal with genres with which you have some familiarity, your success with this task will depend massively on how much you are able to learn from Part One - and how much you are able to demonstrate what you have learnt when you write your own piece in Part Two.

Part One

Mrs Gougeon will put on the weebly all FIVE EXCERPTS from famous and successful pieces of travel literature. You need to READ them carefully, CHOOSE which one you thought was the most effective of its genre, and EXPLAIN, in some detail and with examples (i.e. quotations), why you made your choice.

This is your chance to identify some of the most successful ingredients of good travel literature - e.g. witty anecdotes, figurative descriptions etc. - in order that you can try to embed those very same techniques in your own travel writing in Part Two.

Part Two

First of all, you will need to DECIDE on your subject matter. Unless you have spent the last 12-16 years locked 24/7 in a darkened room, you have all travelled considerably, whether it be internationally, nationally or just in the local area. And it is important to realise that good travel literature does not need to be about some exotic location: one of my favourite pieces by American travel writer, Bill Bryson, is simply about a small section of the Central Line on the London Underground.

Then, using some of the techniques you have observed in one/some/all of the excerpts I have sent you to bring your writing to life and engage and sustain the interest of your reader, you should WRITE (approx) 300-400 words in which you describe an episode from one of your own travels. N.B A tip: don't try to write about an entire holiday, as you will, inevitably, end up just skimming the surface; a brief episode, a particular segment of a journey, one chance encounter - these are ample around which to base such a short piece of travel literature.

The DEADLINE for this task is midnight on Saturday 1st June 2013.

Finally, here is my attempt:

When I was 21, I nearly died.

It was only on 31st October 1996, from the tectonic safety of a house I shared with another trainee teacher, the right side of the walls of H.M.P. Wakefield, home to some of the country's most dangerous and violent criminals, that I first realised quite how close I had come to extinction just under a year earlier. A brief item towards the end of the news mentioned that Gunung Merapi, an active (and, evidently, rather angry) volcano in the middle of the Indonesian island of Java, was erupting. Burning ash was raining down on houses on the mountain's flank, after part of the lava dome itself had collapsed earlier that day.

January 1996. In hindsight, certain details should have spoken louder to us, as we unpacked our rucksacks in the Merapi View hostel the night before our ascent: the eery absence of life emanating from almost all the houses we passed as we strolled around the village upon arrival; the still raw, lifeless canyon carved where half the village had been only two years previously; the fact that the puddles by the side of the road were all bubbling! The incessant plume of smoke from the summit should have warned us that someone was definitely at home; and the distinct absence of any vegetation whatsoever around the entire peak should have made it perfectly clear that visitors were definitely not welcome.

Was it the arrogance of youth? Or the naivete of the foreign traveler? Perhaps we were guilty of exactly the same disrespect we had villified in the hoards of tourists who scaled the holy arc of Uluru in Australia the month before? Deaf to common sense and blind to our own mortality, we duly rose in the middle of the night, donned our waterproofs and walking boots, and joined our brave guide as he took us on the three hour hike to the treeline. Had the sound of the rain abated, had our feverish pace slackened just for a moment, I might have called out to him, and asked him if this was really safe.

However, to be honest, the blackened stumps which spiked the grass as far as the eye could see gave me my answer; as did the thunder which shook the mountainside several times during our climb and descent. For it wasn't thunder. At the end of the news item back in Wakefield, the reporter explained, in sober tones, that the recent eruption was, in fact, nothing more than a continuation: Gunung Merapi had actually been erupting constantly since late 1994.

Note to self: if in close proximity to the fiery peak of an active volcano, walk the other way.