CHARGING AROUND. This item is unavailable.CHARGING AROUND

'Tense, funny - electric' - Sunday Times

‘A delightful, original, amusing tour of some of the UK’s less explored places’ – Chris Mullin

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 for a few years at a mission school in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), an experience that radically changed his thinking about religion and politics. Returning to the UK, he read geography at Newcastle University and undertook doctoral research on human migration in Lesotho. He spent nearly twenty years training geography teachers and environmental studies specialists. After retirement he undertook part-time work researching youth homelessness, young people on the edge of society, and rural development in Northumberland. When he finally decided to retire properly, he indulged his love of slow travel, crossing continents by train and oceans by container ship, as well as attempting to drive around England by electric car. No flying allowed.