Ruff Ride

At this point, every corner of the British Isles has been so hiked, biked, horse-ridden, and driven round by writers, so scraped for meaning and musings, that it’s a wonder the countryside isn’t studded with signs that read: “No littering; no travelogues.” It’s a well-trodden literary landscape, to say the least. Yet here we go again. One more for the road, I guess.

“Been there, done that” comes to mind, particularly when a North American strides boldly into the field, hoping to add his two cents. Almost thirty years ago, Bill Bryson’s pleasantly grumpy peregrinations in Notes from a Small Island captured the nation’s hearts with his detailed mappings of such idiosyncrasies as the protracted discussions and puffing out of cheeks that would result from a proposal to drive from, say, Surrey to Cornwall —“a distance that most Americans would happily go to get a taco.” Two decades later, he released an even grumpier follow-up, The Road to Little Dribbling...