This is one of two books I inherited from my mum's parents, the other being Anna Karenina. I remember going up to my grandpa's house after he died and reading this, by an open fire, drinking Stones Ginger Wine the night of his funeral. I must have been about 16-17, and me and my brother were the only people in the house as our parents stayed with my aunt.

Anyway, maybe it was the age thing, being hyper-sensitive because of the funeral, it being a windy, stormy night, or the ginger wine, but I re More...

This is possibly my favourite book, I re-read it every 3-4 years and will continue to do so.

I think that is partly due to the fact that I first read it at 21 and I'm sure that like like most people my desire to experience new things without a safety net is strongest around that age.
This book is about that; a young man sets out on a journey at a time when travel for its own sake was extremely rare for the vast majority of people, when leaving the county or even the village was something that som More...

When i first picked this up, I thought this one was a female writer:



Author: Laurie Lee
Title: As I walked out one midsummer morning
Time: 1934-1937
Destination: England, Spain, France
Length: several trips
Type: mostly hiking
Rating: 5/10
Poetic, but…

The story: LL is a young man of just over twenty, when he steps out of his door and decides to walk to London. He then stays there for a year, works in construction and meets a girl. After that, he decides to walk around in Spain for a while. He has to lea More...

A beautiful and poetic memoir, that is unputdownable from the word go.

This is the sequal to Cider with Rosie, and see a young Lauri Lee setting out on foot on an adventure. He has never seen the sea, so he starts off towards that, and ends up in Spain, where he astonished by the diffence in climate from England;

"The violence of the heat seemed to bruise the whole earth and turn its crust into one huge scar. One's blood dried up and all juices vanished; the sun struck upwards, sideways, and down, More...

This book was a major influence on my decision to go tramping across Spain. Beautifully written it tells how the young Lee(post Cider with Rosie)leaves his native Gloucestershire for London and ultimately Spain. His decision to go to Spain based purely on his having learned one phrase of Spanish, such impulsiveness is a recurring theme in this autobiography.
Lee lands in Vigo, Galicia and then makes his way through Castille to the Andalusian village of Almuñécar (named Castillo in the book in o More...

Think I am one of the few people of my age and educational background to have never read, or owned, Cider with Rosie. I read this when I realised how little I knew about the Spanish Civil War after reading Victoria Hislop's "The Return". It is a beautiful, poetic and magical book, that conjures up a past world, but that made me so want to go and see what echoes of it might remain in the various towns that he visits. It is the account of the author's travels on foot through 1930s Spain, supportin More...

Laurie Lee was born in 1915 in Stroud. He left home at nineteen to experience life with only his optimism and a few meagre possessions. He walked to London via the coast, he ‘wanted to see the sea.’ After a year in London he booked a one-way ticket to Vigo, Spain. From there he walked down through inland Spain and arrived at Cadiz, which failed to impress him ‘a heap of squat cubist hovels.’ He survived by busking his violin to the confused Spanish, many thought he was French. After all, why wou More...

The best of the 3 autobiographical books poet Laurie Lee wrote, this one concerns his walking tour of Spain just before the Spanish Civil War. He was penniless, young, and open to experience, and as a result, he had a wonderful time wandering from town to town playing his violin for small change, food and lodging. It worked, in that long-gone time, and the descriptions of Spain before the wars are heartbreaking because Lee is so good at bringing to life all that we've lost without sentimentalizi More...

I have come to this book after the pushing, pressing advice of a friend, but also escorted by two positive reviews from other friends. I was looking for those seven or eight pages taken place in Galicia, and these are not disappointing. It flashes a musical English and a smelling prose around, describing the pleasures and fears of a young British in the 1930s.

But it is also the journey of an English man around Spain, that country full of beggars and gipsies, where people is killed on the street More...

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) is an autobiographical account of an epic journey around Spain in the nineteen thirties.
It is 1934 and Laurie Lee, the author, is a young man. He leaves the security of his Cotswold home to embark on an adventure.
Initially he travels to London and ekes out an existence by playing the violin and by labouring on a London building site. He decides to go to Spain. It seems a rash decision because the young lad’s choice of destination is based on the fact More...

Laurie Lee writes about his travels through Spain in 1934 right before the Spanish Civil War breaks out. Lee makes his way by foot, earning his was by playing his violin and putting his cap on the ground for tips. I enjoyed the author's description of the people and country during the 30s. I thought the books was best read slowly so that I could catch all of Lee's wonderful descriptive phrases. Lee's trip was cut short when he was "rescued" by a British freighter sent to pick up English citizens More...

This memoir picks up where CIDER WITH ROSIE left off. At age 19 Laurie Lee leaves his small Cotswold village, spends a year working on construction in London, and then goes to Spain. During his year walking through the country he supports himself by playing his violin for donations. Twice he almost dies from heatstroke, but he meets a variety of interesting people from villagers to fellow travelers. But the Spanish Civil War decends and he makes his way back to England, only to leave a few month More...

Another book to prepare me for a trip to Spain...this one is a memoir of a 20-year-old Englishman who walks across Spain in 1935-6. His only source of income is busking - playing his violin. He sleeps in the rough, occasionally, and otherwise in inexpensive inns or homes. He learns Spanish (beginning with only one phrase, which is why he picked Spain in the first place) and has many adventures along the way, meeting many people. Written in a lyrical style, the book is a series of vignettes, set More...

I am not a great reader of autobiographies but this one I really enjoyed. Travelling around England before making the crossing to Spain made an enjoyable read. The journey in Spain however really got inside my head. This is before people had "gap years" or went travelling to"find themselves". However travelling in Spain just before the Spanish Civil War was a dangerous mission to be on, and he met some very strange people on his way across what was then ( without a mobile phone or even a map) a More...

This has got to be one of the most evocative memoirs ever written; it certainly tops all the other road-trip/travelers tales I’ve read. As befits an award winning poet, Lee’s prose has a concise, 3-D image-making eloquence that drops the reader into the center of a scene, in the breathing presence of a character, or into the tactile truth of a landscape.

In the mid-1930s, the nineteen year-old Lee sets out on foot from his Gloucestershire home, with a tin of biscuits and a violin, on his way to L More...

“As I Walked out One Midsummer Morning” is the portrait of a young man adrift in a country poised to tear itself apart in civil war. This is the journey of a man from childhood through adolescence and finally to the brink of soldier hood. And yet for that, this book feels a bit like looking at beautiful vacation slides of your buddy who “found himself” backpacking in Europe. Yes, the pictures are pretty, and occasionally we see a glimpse of a companion here and there, but there’s not much narrat More...

Beautifully written book about Laurie Lee's experiences as a nineteen-year-old walking through Spain just before, and as, the Civil War started. As much poetry as prose. Part of the effect is that he spends all but the last few pages describing rural (and even urban) Spain in 1934 as still living in medieval times, a state of serfdom, ignorance, poverty, disease, and filth that he observed but did not question. Suddenly the rise of the republican movement is an awakening for him as well as a con More...

This is the first of two sequels to Cider with Rosie and I found it to be equally enjoyable. Lee sets off to London at the age of nineteen, planning to meet up with a girlfriend. After diverting to the south coast of England because he’s never seen the ‘proper’ sea before, and surviving successfully by busking with his violin, he arrives in London, moving in with his girlfriend and her family.

Eventually he finds digs and a job in Putney and begins working on a building site. After about a year i More...

Terrific writing by a well know British writer about his travels as a young man in Spain in the mid 1930's at the time of the start of the Civil War. His descriptions of the country and the people were great. It is hard to imagine doing what this writer did as a young man. He lived without and walking was his means of transportation. It was given to me as a birthday present while traveling around England this month. It was well worth reading.

This book is a treasure. Laurie Lee gives a flavour of Spain as he passes through each town and village on his unplanned walking jurney. He manages to be so objective and unjudgemental, almost as if he is a simple, unassuming, observing shadow- leaving no changes in his wake. At the same time, I found myself really liking him. The end is stunning when he finds himself unable to just leave Spain- responsibility having at last imprinted its mark on him.

A great story of a young author and poet setting out on his life by joining the many foriegners streaming over to try to stem the tide of faschism in the Spanish civil war. Beautiful writing, authentic history (as confirmed by George Orwell, et al) and a gripping adventure. I read this book as a schoolboy and it inspired in me a love of poetry and good literature. Thank you Laurie Lee.

I first read this book when I was eighteen and living in London, and absolutely loved it. My copy has fallen to pieces and I was thrilled to find a secondhand copy of a beautiful illustrated Andre Deutsch edition. But even better, the book is as beautifully written as I remembered. An exquisite memoir, with fascinating glimpses into the period.

It might be the best literature of autobiography I have ever read so far. The art of his describing things lightens me to the air in daydreaming. I hardly find I can't put his book down as soon as I read a few lines of his exciting adventure to a country he knew nothing but only a Spanish phrase for "Will you please give me a glass of water?"

I absolutely loved this book. It's like an English On the Road and every sentence is constructed like poetry. It's a beautiful read and a driving narrative. When it was over, I wanted more. I read the sequel... it isn't more of the same. Be warned :).

I enjoyed reading this and Lee definitely had some fine adventures, but I was troubled by how willing Lee was to observe life going on around him without judging wrongdoing - as if Spain (and Spanish women) were his own personal amusement theatre.

I love Spain and its culture, so thought I would really enjoy this book, especially in the historical context of the time. However, whilst it was by no means unpleasant to read, I found it all too easy to dip in and out of, taking me far too long to read and it really only gripped me in the last two chapters. I think this was to do with the style of the prose and also the very repetitious nature of his stories. I feel like the book ended just as it was getting good and am really interested in re More...

Really well written. The characters really come to life. Starts with Laurie Lee living the life of a tramp in southern England. An England pretty much gone. Then he is working around Spain when the civil war breaks out.

"Twenty years before Jack Kerouac set off On the Road, Lee left the safety of his rural English home and embarked on a wondrous adventure...Lee masterfully evokes the ambiance and tension of Europe on the eve of World War II. Lee's narration is like curling up on one's grandfather's lap and listening to stories of being attacked by wolves, hounded by the police, romanced by idealism, and seduced by beauty. This is a fine nonfiction complement to Ernest Hemingway's From Whom the Bell Tolls [sic]. More...

Another superb book from Laurie Lee, although much more grim in its subject matter than Cider with Rosie

Fantastic writing. With such ease the author brings to life the events and details of his travels that you feel you have seen them. Perhaps some of the best descriptive writing I have come across.