The Amber Trail, Natasha Scott-Stokes (1993)

A ride from Gdansk to Thessaloniki in 1992, initially intended to recreate the ancient route on which amber was transported, but better for its descriptions of some of eastern Europe shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall

Weidenfield and Nicholson 0 297 81306 4 Octo 199 pp £17.99

A major tour organised around a historical quest is a promising idea. It provides the potential for a narrative in which a mystery is steadily uncovered.

At this, Scott-Stokes starts encouragingly with a canter through the history of amber, assembled from secondary sources. It was a story of which I knew nothing, which made the exploration seem doubly worthwhile.

Sadly, though, the ‘trail’ goes cold on our traveller pretty quickly – a fact about which she is upfront in the book. Thereafter, her interest shifts to a search for ‘a new European sentiment’, in the wake of the collapse of the iron curtain and the end of Soviet-style communism.

At this the book does rather better. First, Scott-Stokes’ journey takes her on a route that would have been nearly impossible a few years earlier. Poland, Czechoslavakia and Hungary did not welcome western cycle tourists for many decades, so she is not only on largely unwheelmaked territory, but she is also suggesting a trail that merits consideration by others, even now the wall is 20 years down.

Along the way the author seeks out opinions, both from casual contacts and from meetings she has set up with fellow members of PEN (the international writers organisation). How representative any of these are is open to question – but they quickly dispel her optimism about ‘a new European spirit’ having flowered. Conversations she has in Budapest so dash her hopes for Europe – indeed for humanity – that thereafter she takes refuge in experiences of the moment rather then her search for a unifying spirit.

This is a book that does not deliver what it promises, and like so many accounts of long journeys, peters out towards the end. Nonetheless, Scott-Stokes’ writing provides reason enough to seek out the book – not least as an ispiration for a route that is still substantially untrammled.

PS June 09