Литагент HarperCollins - The Grand Tour Guide to the World

Copyright

WARNING

Some of this book is factual but most of it isn’t. Many of the observations are incorrect and the advice idiotic. The Grand Tour accepts no responsibility for anything that happens to you as a result of following tips or imitating actions you read about in these pages. Basically, it’s your fault if you get thrown out of the first-class lounge/an aeroplane/France.

HarperCollins Publishers

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2017

FIRST EDITION

© W. Chump & Sons Limited 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2017

Cover photographs Stuart Pettican © Amazon Prime Video. All other images © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008257859

Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008257842

Version 2017-09-27

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Origins of the Grand Tour

Pit Stop 01 – USA

Motoring Facts from Around the World

Postcard from the Tent – Johannesburg

Pit Stop 02 – Portugal

The Greatest Car-Making Countries on Earth

Postcard from the Tent – Victorville

Pit Stop 03 – Jordan

Postcard from the Tent – Whitby

Pit Stop 04 – Italy

Postcard from the Tent – Rotterdam

Pit Stop 05 – Wales

Pit Stop 06 – Morocco

Postcard from the Tent – Stuttgart

Pit Stop 07 – Namibia

Postcard from the Tent – Dubai

Pit Stop 08 – Germany & Austria

Postcard from the Tent – Nashville

Pit Stop 09 – Barbados

Postcard from the Tent – Kakslauttanen

Pit Stop 10 – France

Postcard from the Tent – Loch Ness

The Celebrity Brain Crash Machine

The Grand Tour Puzzles

Series 2 … The Tour Continues

Index

Picture Credits

Corrections and Mistakes

About the Publisher

People often say, ‘It’s a small world.’ But if you asked them to walk from Berlin to Cape Town they’d probably make a huge fuss and insist on taking an aeroplane. That’s because the world is, in fact, massive. It can also seem a strange and daunting place, but not if you have the right guide. And that’s where we come in. No one is more seasoned at crossing the world than The Grand Tour. No one has been through more airports, stayed in more hotels, spoken to more local people and learned more indigenous words for ‘sorry about this’. That’s why The Grand Tour is uniquely placed to show you around some of the high spots of this huge world of ours and to share with you our wisdom, our skills and our holiday photographs. This book is not just an indispensable guide. In fact, it’s not an indispensable guide at all. A lot of the information in it is wrong and possibly dangerous. We’re not sure. Even so, whenever you’re travelling, be certain to keep this book close to you – and as long as you only look at the pictures you should be fine. Remember, it’s a big world out there, and we’re all somewhere in it. Except astronauts.

CLARKSON, HAMMOND & MAY

Originally, a Grand Tour was a 17th- to 19th-century pursuit in which, say, three chums would find themselves at a loose end for whatever reason and would agree to travel together to foreign lands for the purposes of cultural and spiritual enrichment, and also to find out if the Aston Martin DB11 was any good. Before departing one of the friends might say, ‘Look, this isn’t completely convenient for me. I’m supposed to be making a Christmas special about 1970s toys,’ and the other two would reply, ‘Oh for God’s sake, James. How long does that take? Get a bloody move on,’ and then the two idle friends would wait for a bit, and then for a bit longer while their third friend spent a week packing his clothes very neatly into a leather suitcase, and then they would away on their travels.

‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU’RE OFF TO MAKE A PROGRAMME ABOUT PUTTING THINGS BACK TOGETHER??’

Their destinations might be many and varied, often inspired by a map on the wall of their new office in the Chiswick area of London, which they would look at until they found somewhere that sounded interesting, perhaps having checked what was to be found there using an information source such as The Encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Having established that somewhere was interesting, the chums would set off and before you knew it they would find themselves in Italy, where they would attend displays of local art and sculpture and visit the opera, apart from one of the friends who would perhaps behave like the kind of total moron who thinks Cosìfan tutte is ice cream.

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Perhaps soon after, the chums would find themselves in the north of France, which is very underrated actually, especially if you like drizzle, and here one of the friends might devote his time to visiting a local adult souvenirs emporium, where he would purchase a very rude item for the purposes of making an unhelpful directional aid for one of his colleagues while ignoring the gentleman behind the counter who was saying the French for, ‘Ah, hello, sir. It’s been a while since we’ve seen you in here.’

After this, the friends’ Grand Tour adventure of learning and enrichment and dicking about might take them to Morocco, where the noisiest of the friends would not shut up about terrible Italian things, or they might move on to the exotic climes of the Caribbean to do something that didn’t seem especially relevant, or they might even find themselves in Jordan, where they would challenge themselves and would say to themselves only a long time afterwards, ‘Oh heavens, this hasn’t gone down very well at home.’