In 1982 I bought a book in Brussels, Children’s Letters to CS Lewis, a limited edition, printed on hand-made paper with black and white photographs imitating the real thing. I had to borrow money to buy it. Subsequently repaid the loan and still have the book as one of my most prized possessions. I can even picture the little shop, dim lit, tucked away in one of the quiet passages off the Grand Place.
I had another book experience shortly before I left home. There was a book sale at the shopping mall and I fancied two books. Although it had been marked down considerably, I still couldn’t really afford it. I sat down for a coffee whilst pondering the choice. It was Caribbean Coffee and the taste of coconut carried me off to far away places. I bought both. The one was “Stones into Schools” by Gregg Mortimer. The other: “Che Guevara and the Mountain of Silver” by Anne Mustoe. They travelled with me.
Every evening I would read one passage from Anne’s book to end my day. It was like joining her on her journey through South America. I like the way she writes and the way she travels. I was excited as I anticipated where the next leg of the journey would take us. And as with any journey, I was sad when it ended and I had to say goodbye.
I decided to Google her name to find out more. Wanted to start planning my next trip! And then I saw the word: Obituary. This is what I found out:
It is an exceptional author who can supply a book with three appendices so varied as a technical specification of a bicycle, a timeline of the life of Cleopatra and an ichthyological listing.
Admirers of the intrepid former headmistress turned round-the-world cyclist Anne Mustoe were well accustomed to such precise, detailed and charming information in the books in which she chronicled what she termed her “new career”. When she resolved to cycle round the world, Mustoe was 54, somewhat overweight and unfit, and without any idea of how to mend a puncture. She had not ridden a bike for 30 years, wobbled when she tried again, and she hated camping, picnics and discomfort.
Yet, inspired by the chance sighting of a solitary European man pedalling across the Great Thar Desert while she was riding a bus through Rajasthan on a holiday in India, she “traded in the Kurt Geiger shoes and the Alfa Romeo” for a pair of trainers and cycle clips.
The glimpse of the lone cyclist which inspired her own ambition to cycle round the world came in January 1983. She said it took her four years from that defining moment to screw up her courage, resign her job and cycle into the sunrise, but she calculated that she had no ties, her stepsons were married off, and she could just afford it if she lived modestly until her pension came through.
She set out from London to ride round the world from west to east in 1987 and completed the circumnavigation 12,000 miles and 15 months later. In
A Bike Ride (1992) she recorded that she had cycled 11,552 miles in 14 countries over 439 days, in which £4,898 had been spent on food, accommodation and sundries and £1,127 on fares. She had lost 23lb in weight.
The extra dimension with which Mustoe sustained her travels was that she followed historical routes: Roman roads across Europe; Alexander the Great’s route from Greece to the Indus Valley; Pakistan and India with the Moghuls and the Raj; and so on. Across the United States she followed the great pioneer trails, and undeterred by downpours, heat, political turmoil or amorous waiters, she promptly decided to do it all over again, in reverse direction.
For the second ride, and subsequent book, Lone Traveller, she went from Rome, following Roman roads to Lisbon, the Conquistadors across South America, Captain Cook over the Pacific, and the Silk Route from China back to Rome. Special chapters dealt with the day-to-day difficulties of the voyage up the Amazon in small cargo boats, and cycling the Australian Outback, the Gobi Desert and the Karakoram Highway.
Two Wheels in the Dust, encapsulating five winters on the Indian sub-continent riding down from the mountains of Nepal, through India to the highlands of Sri Lanka, was itself a bicycle of a book, really two books in one — marrying incidents from the ancient Hindu epic of The Ramayana (printed in one typeface) to the account of Mustoe’s own travels in the same landscape (printed in another).
For Cleopatra’s Needle the indefatigable cyclist set off from the obelisk of that name on the Thames Embankment to ride back to its original location, Heliopolis in Egypt, hugging the waterways of rivers, canals, and coasts, and mountain streams for her route across the Alps, while Amber, Furs and Cockleshells dealt with what were, by her standards, three short rides, the longest a mere 2,000 miles, in the paths of merchants in amber (the Amber route from the Baltic to the Mediterranean), furs (the Santa Fe Trail), and pilgrims (the pilgrims’ way from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela).
Finally came Che Guevara and the Mountain of Silver in which she cycled from Buenos Aires in the wheeltracks of the 500cc Norton as ridden by Che and his friend Alberto Granado in early life, and recalled in the film The Motorcycle Diaries. On her return route Mustoe rode back to Buenos Aires by the Spanish Silver Road from the Bolivian Altiplano.
Anne Mustoe set off on what was to be her last ride in May 2009, still riding her trusty Condor, and was in Aleppo, Syria, when she fell ill and died in hospital on November 10. Sadly we can no longer plot her progress around the globe. We can however salute her as a great headmistress and admire her determination and resolve to break with her old career and launch herself into something entirely new but deeply challenging and immensely rewarding.
Most of it From The Times
November 28, 2009
