CHARGING AROUND – By Clive Wilkinson

528

Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car

Eye Books was the Midlands winner of the Small Press of the Year at the British Book Awards 2022
6 APRIL 2023 * PAPERBACK * £9.99 * / ISBN: 9781785633454

Having crossed a continent by train and sailed around the world by container ship, Clive Wilkinson has always had a penchant for slow travel. As his eightieth birthday approaches, he and his wife Joan set out on a new expedition: to tour the edges of England by electric car. How hard could that be? Given the parlous state of the country’s charge-point infrastructure back in 2018, the answer turns out to be ‘very’. In a 1,900-mile odyssey through fading seaside towns, rainswept hilltop passes and England’s only desert, each day’s driving for these unlikely pioneers is overshadowed by a cloud of apprehension. Will they make it to the next charge point? Will it be in working order? Will someone else be using it?
You could only undertake such a trip with a calm temperament and robust sense of humour. Fortunately Clive has both. With a relentless curiosity for history, geography and, above all, people, he and Joan explore the reality of life on England’s periphery – the ‘left behind’ areas that, by voting for Brexit, changed the course of British history – making new friends with every mile.

CLIVE WILKINSON trained as a religious studies teacher and taught at a mission school in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) before returning to the UK. He spent nearly twenty years training geography teachers and environmental studies specialists. His previous books are The Drop-Out Society, based on his own academic research into youth homelessness and unemployment in the North East of England, and Reflections from the Monkey Deck, an account of travelling the oceans by container ship.

‘A delightful, original, amusing tour of some of the UK’s less explored places’ Chris Mullin
‘The subtitle could equally well have been “a journey in search of a working and compatible charging point”. Frequently hilarious and highly recommended’ The Bookbag *
‘An entertaining travelogue taking in English history, geography and, most poignantly at times, human nature. An excellent read’ Nat Barnes, EVs Unplugged
‘As the journey progresses, you realise that, if good travel writing is all about things going horribly wrong, there’s no better way, short of a three-legged donkey, to set out than by electric car’ Simon Hacker, Stroud Times

More information: Simon Edge | 07765 898650 | simon@eye-books.com
www.eye-books.com
Eye Books was the Midlands winner of the Small