Reading and Travelling to Wiltshire

Submitted: 29th October 2017

Books and travel go together, right? The Travelling Reader thinks so too as they’ve sent us some lovely boxes to explore the literary travel scene even more. We’ve been to Cambridge, Oxford, Northumberland…too many places to mention. Now, we’ve just been to Imber in Wiltshire, in the same week that Neil Spring’s book The Lost Village took us to the very same real life ghost village. Is this a spooky coincidence?

The box reveal was a very exciting moment.It’s something very special as the attention to detail in simply stunning. Each book comes with such care and attention, I think the book elves have taken hours to package each one.

The Travelling Reader

BookTrail The Sea Change

Each parcel is a delight from the very first opening.

A mound of tissue paper with logo opens to reveal a mound of presents….

Everything centres around the book this month was The Sea Change by Joanna Rossiter – set in the ghost town of Imber and a few other places besides…

From the cover, the inspiration for the presents comes..

Cover inspiration

A bookmark with a bluebell charm ( for someone who can use anything from till receipts to wooden coffee stirrers as book marks this is a LUXURY!

A scarf with bluebell motive

There’s photos of the locations tucked inside the book – with Imber being a place you can actually only visit about twice a year on designated days , this was a very cool addition to the box. As you know, I love good pics and photos on this site and I think I let out a shriek of delight when I noticed this little touch. The books have all been wrapped like presents in small bags, wrapping paper and tied in a bow so everything is kept nicely in place until you open it. I love this part of the box opening.

Food and drink

The tea is ideal to enjoy when reading the book and this tea is from Wiltshire of course where the book is set. I feel this is a real key point of the book box as you’re getting gifts locally sourced and this means it’s so much more meaningful to the story. The packaging of the tea is like in the olden days and as I opened it, I felt as if I was really tasting the tea they would have had in the novel. None of your supermarket tea, this is a pouch and it’s very nice sitting on a shelf too!

I can’t believe I’ve never had chocolate fudge before! This was an eye opener in more ways than one and was a VERY tasty edition to the book reading experience. You can tell by the photos that it disappeared in-between shots so be assured the bag is a LOT fuller than in the pics!

Smell and aromas

Bath oil to immerse yourself in the other setting of the book – India – so Eastern bath oil is a dream. I read sections of this book with the oil scent wafting in the air and was very much transported to the Indian setting. Smells are very evocative and this was gorgeous. Try and read the Indian parts and even just sniff the oil if you have to – I love things like this when it enhances the senses.

The team behind these boxes are wonderful. I have the Travelling Reader herself on the blog very soon as I was very keen to find out why and how this is all book boxing is possible. It’s a pleasure to receive the box through the post, and an absolute thrill to open. I swear I get tingles when I open these- the tingly paper, the rustle of the fake grass, the flicker of the photos as they fall from the book….

A very exciting experience for book lovers everywhere and kudos to the Travelling Reader team for putting all this together with such care and attention to detail. Very impressive.