I’ve always regarded blogs and websites as a kind of quick and dirty way of recording your trip, in much the same way as magazine articles. Something that skims the surface of what you spent weeks, months or years doing. As a reader, if all you’re interested in is a kind of edited highlights version they’re perfect. If you want to get across something in greater depth then the book format still has a lot to offer but of course it requires a reader to commit to something more than just flicking the pages of a magazine in W H Smiths.

For example, I did a short trip a couple of years ago and wrote it up when I returned by way of personal memoir. It came to a little over 25,000 words. I then produced a 4000 word version which I uploaded to the ride tales section here and as a result was approached by a journalist who asked if they could use it in their magazine. It would need to be cut down to 1200 words though. All that was left by the time it appeared was just the “shiny” bits, the snow covered peaks. The body of it, the parts that don’t “photograph” well, were all left on the cutting room floor.

That’s a different product to producing a book that has the space to connect ideas, to explore side alleys and to come to a conclusion. I’ve heard it said that you don’t know what you think about something till you’ve written it down and there is something to be said for that. I hardly ever end up with what I intended to write - even this post has drifted away from what I thought I was going to say. Whether anyone else wants to take that journey with you is another matter.