Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A man takes a restorative walking holiday in Germany but finds more than he bargained for…
The Lighthouse
What you need to know before your trail
The Lighthouse begins on a North Sea ferry, on whose blustery outer deck stands Futh, a middle-aged, recently separated man heading to Germany for a restorative walking holiday.
Spending his first night in Hellhaus at a small, family-run hotel, he finds the landlady hospitable but is troubled by an encounter with an inexplicably hostile barman.
In the morning, Futh puts the episode behind him and sets out on his week-long circular walk along the Rhine. As he travels, he contemplates his childhood; a complicated friendship with the son of a lonely neighbour; his parents’ broken marriage and his own. But the story he keeps coming back to, the person and the event affecting all others, is his mother and her abandonment of him as a boy, which left him with a void to fill, a substitute to find.
Travel Guide
The River Rhine
This novel is a walk, a wander and a realisation along the River Thine in Germany
Every day Futh stays in a different hotel, on a walking tour having first arrived at hotel called Hellhaus…
Hellhaus is a play on words and images. The name in German means Lighthouse, but of course it had more dubious connotations in English. Having said that this hotel is not one you would want to stay in. The host sleeping in any room she fancies for example and there is a display of..well.. dead flies…
River Rhine
The Rhine is one of the longest rivers in Europe. Starting in the Swiss Alps (in Switzerland), it flows for some 1,232 km (766 miles) and passes through six countries -Switzerland, Principality of Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, France and the Netherlands before flowing into the North Sea at Rotterdam.The Rhine also acts as a border between Germany and France. The Rhine valley narrows to form a steep sided-valley filled with vineyards and castles overlooking the river.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Lighthouse
Destination: Germany Author/Guide: Alison Moore Departure Time: 2000s
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