Cambridge English Empower C1 READING PLUS

Unit 3 Travel and adventure

1 SPEAKING
BETTER READING:
a Work in pairs and answer the questions. UNDERSTANDING STANCE
1 Before you travel do you read … ? When you read, it is important to understand the author’s
• blogs • articles stance – the author’s position and feelings towards what they
• guide books • online reviews are writing about.
Do you find them useful? Why / Why not?
Read the extract below from the first text, and decide
2 What’s the difference between travel books and guide books? the author’s stance.
3 Have you read any interesting travel books? Who was the otherwise he’s not too particular
author and where did they travel? The author feels
A Kalder follows a logical approach.
2 READING B Kalder’s approach is quite casual.
C Kalder’s approach is irresponsible.
a Find the underlined words and phrases (1–10) in the
text on page 2. Read the article and use the context to
match them to their meanings (a–f). c Find phrases 1–5 in the texts and choose the best
1  intrepid a showing emotion in an interpretation of the author’s stance.
2  off the beaten track awkward or silly way 1 with limited success so far
3  quirk b something that is strange A The project is praised for being so ambitious.
4  dodgy or unexpected B The project is criticised for being over-ambitious.
5  smug c brave, showing no fear of C The project is being made fun of.
6  mawkishness dangerous situations 2 with someone who has been there
d too pleased or satisfied A History becomes more real if it is described by a witness.
about something you have B History is always subjective.
achieved or know C History is about people rather than events.
e not known or popular with 3 made me pick up an atlas
many people A The reviewer is frustrated by the amount of detail.
f dishonest or unreliable B The reviewer does not understand the purpose of the
references.
b Correct the sentences about the texts. C The reviewer is impressed by the author’s knowledge.
1 Daniel Kalder’s main criterion for choosing places is their 4 all sorts of people
accessibility. A Tony Hawks needed to be suspicious of so many offers of
2 Daniel Kalder’s approach is criticised for being too academic. help.
3 Daniel Kalder gives a lot of context about the areas he B Kindness runs through all levels of Irish society.
travels to. C Many of the people who helped Tony Hawks were not
4 Travels with Myself and Another covers the author’s travels usually very kind.
from the 1970s. 5 his radio ‘fans’
5 Martha Gellhorn’s descriptions of meals with famous people A Tony Hawks wasn’t really a star but he could be
are boring. compared to one.
6 Martha Gellhorn is described as quite dependent on others. B The radio was not a very practical way of communication
7 Martha Gellhorn’s writing is criticised for being very in this situation.
economical. C Real fans would never have contacted Tony Hawks in this
8 Tony Hawks travels across Ireland. way.
9 Every week Tony Hawks contacts the radio show.
10 Round Ireland with a Fridge gives a historical angle on life in 3 SPEAKING
Ireland.
a Work in groups and answer the questions.
1 Which of these books would you like to read and why?
2 If you could write a book about your travelling experiences,
what would you write about?

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 Unit 3

OUR TOP TRAVEL BOOKS

ROUND IRELAND WITH A FRIDGE, TONY HAWKS
When British writer, performer and musician, Hawks, makes a dodgy bet for 100 pounds that he can ‘hitchhike round the circumference
of Ireland, with a fridge, in one calendar month,’ he starts, in 1997, an unexpectedly wonderful adventure into the good-natured soul
of the Irish people. Though the book begins inauspiciously as a bad parody of the traveller-gone-native yarn, with Hawks assuming
a smug distance from the people and events he encounters, happily fate intervenes in the form of a jovial radio-show host who
convinces Hawks to phone in daily to share updates about his travels with the fridge. Almost overnight, Hawks becomes a regional
legend – ‘The Fridge Man’– with all sorts of people willing to help him achieve his goal, however silly it may be. What could have been
a convenient contrivance actually allows a kinder and far funnier Hawks to appear, as his daily talks with his radio ‘fans’ bring him
unexpected delights, including encounters with an overenthusiastic innkeeper and his family, the amazing champion surfer Bingo,
various musicians and lots of pub visits. In the end, Hawks’s book becomes a lively celebration of contemporary Irish society and the
goodwill of its people that neither revels in irony nor descends into mawkishness.

TRAVELS WITH MYSELF AND LOST COSMONAUT, DANIEL KALDER

ANOTHER, MARTHA GELLHORN
‘Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.’ So
Martha Gellhorn introduces her travel memoir of her
most memorable horror journeys in an entertaining
and historical book, Travels with Myself and Another, a
collection of ‘the best of the worst journeys,’ originally
published in 1978 and spanning a swathe of history
from the WWII Greatest Generation to the 1970’s
counterculture revolution.
‘We are supposed to learn by experience;’ Gellhorn
reflects on her repeated travels in her introduction. Her
laugh-out-loud descriptions of lunches with everyone
from Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang in war-torn
China to Mrs. Mandelstam in the oppressive Soviet
communist regime provide an entertaining romp through
history with someone who has been there. Her casual
mentions of the countries in Africa and realistic dialect of
the natives of the Caribbean made me pick up an atlas.
Her character as a true free spirit who hires her own boats
against the advice of locals shines through in her tight
and un-politically correct prose. ‘I remember West Africa
the way one remembers pain, as an incident but never
the precise sensations.’
Travels with Myself and Another was one of the first books
that brought home to me that real life can be just as
entertaining to read as fiction. I found myself studying
Gellhorn’s quick and direct writing style, impressed by
the amount of description she is able to capture in just a
few words. I loved reading her stories that contained the
honest appraisals of her thoughts and impressions. I often
picked up her book, saying to myself, ‘Take me away,
Martha.’ Travels with Myself and Another opened my eyes
to the depth of knowledge in women’s lives and stories.
Daniel Kalder doesn’t want to be a tourist. He doesn’t
want to go to the places everyone goes to, he doesn’t
want to see the tour-book sights. He wants to be an
anti-tourist – though he realises it’s hard to find any
spot that hasn’t made it into the guidebooks and onto
the intrepid travelers’ itineraries.
Kalder chooses some of the obscurer pseudo-statelets
of the former Soviet Union – ones in Europe, no less.
Obscurity is pretty much the only thing he’s looking for.
He wants to go to places off the beaten track, otherwise
he’s not too particular.
Aside from describing various (geographic and cultural)
wastelands and the quirks of travelling there, Kalder does
find a thing or two worth seeing. The Mari, a non-Slavic
tribe living along Russia’s Volga river, for example, ‘are the
last true pagans in Europe’ and there’s Kalmykia, home
to ‘Chess City’, the nutty ambition of its president to make
this the chess capital of the world (with limited success so
far). So he does move about with a little purpose.
Kalder takes a non-serious approach to travel – and to
almost everything. He jokes a lot (and has quite a few
funny (mis)adventures to tell), but he’s also not very
serious about almost everything, a laid back attitude that
works quite well for the book but can also be somewhat
irritating. He does try to provide a bit of history and
background for the places he visits, but doesn’t really get
beyond the bare essentials. All in all it’s quite good fun,
and certainly an enjoyable pass-time book – a good read
for a long trip, for example.

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