Three Men in a Float: Across England at 15 mph

by Dan Kieran, Ian Vince

With a top speed of 15 miles per hour and fuel efficiency of a penny a mile, a decommissioned milk float is the ideal vehicle for an epic journey between England's most easterly and westerly points. After planning the entire trip on the back of a beer mat, buying a 1958 decommissioned milk float on eBay, and charging its tired batteries, the team set off from Lowestoft to Lands End. On the way, they discovered that their float needs to charge for eight hours for every two hours it spends on the road. Relying on the milk of human kindness, they were at the mercy of strangers every night, sometimes even using other people's cookers just to keep the show on the road. En route, they were treated to tea and rock cakes by the Vice President of the Women's Institutes, succeeded in blacking out a Cornish campsite while charging their float (now dubbed The Mighty One), stayed with the monks at Buckfast Abbey where they undertook a vow of silence, and drove 500 miles to Tintagel, the birth place of King Arthur, only to find it had closed—all in the name of discovering lost England. You may be why on earth don't these men drive a car like normal people? But this is no ordinary journey. This is an eccentric odyssey through the English countryside. Three Men in a Float is about all things English and the pleasure to be had if you are prepared to slow down, get out of your car, and go off the beaten track.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, British Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

Dan Kieran is Deputy Editor of The Idler, a bi-yearly British magazine. He is a writer, editor, and CEO and co-founder of the crowd-funding publishing platform Unbound.

Reviews

[Kieran Telo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book boasts on its cover that Metro had reviewed it as "comic brilliance". Metro is a free newspaper mostly read and then chucked away by train commuters in southern UK. Metro is cobbled together from press releases and agency copy and you can rest assured that any "review" in this rag is at best a hasty rewrite of the publisher's press release.



The book is not brilliant and it is not particularly funny either. Unless you find countless variations on the "how drunk was I last night?!" anecdote especially amusing. But this is not such a bad book; the best chapters (they're written alternately) are by Ian Vince who tends to address bigger topics like the Slow Movement, psychogeography (ley lines etc), green issues, and so on. While these aren't explored in any particular depth they are a welcome relief from all the laddish beer drinking, ciggie smoking, and battery charging which form the basis for Dan Kieran's chapters.



The book gives us grounds for optimism that the UK is not as crap as some of us think it is, and that people generally are willing to help one another. That is a refreshing message amid widespread cynicism. So: on the whole... 3 Men In A Float is worth a try.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Can you get a speeding ticket in a milk float?"

"Come to think of it, can you even get three men in a milk float in the first place?"

"And, could they really drive it across England in under four weeks?"

Can you imagine the length of th traffic james they caused ...

"After planning the entire trip on the back of a beer mat and buying a 1958 decommissioned milk float on eBay, Dan, Ian and Pras set off from Lowestoft to Land's End. En route they blacked out an entire campsite whilst charging their float ('The Mighty One'), went to the pub, stalked the mythical beast of Bodmin Moor, went to the pub again and drove five hundred miles to Tintagel (King Arthur's birthplace), only to find it was closed - all in the name of discovering the real England, really slowly."
~~back cover

A great little adventure -- the kind most of us only dream about dreaming up, let alone actually doing; the kind that becomes one of the highest points of your life, and never forgotten. Dan and Ian took it in turns to write a chapter, covering alternating days of traveling, foraging for electricity charges and a place to sleep and the people met along the way. Many of the days included each one's rambling thoughts about the trip, about the country they were passing through, and the philosophy (or not) of fast travel, tourism and the consequent smallness of the world. Each in their way (and Pras too, although he didn't write chapters) waxed lyrical about the beauty and treasures of their homeland, in a typically understated way.

Not exactly a travel guide, and perhaps more comprehensible to the English rather than us Yanks, it was still a delight to join them as they rambled slowly from and to the farthest points of the island.

[Connie]

You have to really like England to enjoy this book, in my opinion. The three men of the title are pleasant enough and provide some good information about various portions of England as they slowly traverse it in their 1958 electric milk float. (I looked online and found a photo of the three men and their float, which was very helpful in visualizing their travel as I read.) Some of the book gets a little dry, but all in all it's an enjoyable read. I especially liked the anecdotes about the characters the authors met on their journey. It seems many of the more colorful ones were connected in some way to pubs in which the authors charged up themselves while charging the float. But small village pubs are central to appreciating true English culture, so it's only fitting that they were given so much ink on these pages. Almost Brysonesque in tone and scope, but perhaps not as polished and clever as Bryson's travel books.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me along time ago by a man in a bookshop. It has sat on the shelf since then, waiting for me to discover it.
And I am really glad I did. This is one of those "mad ideas in order to write a book" stories, this time it's about three men driving from the east to the west of England in a milk float. And like all good travelogues, very soon it's not about the journey that about the people they meet along the way. I loved reading about the journey, but more so about the experiences they had and the people they met along the way. It's an easy read, and every other chapter is written by two of the three men, but said from the odd bit of repetition (and the fact that the guys do not have unique writing styles each - I tend to remember the whole thing as being from the point of view of the driver, which it isn't) it works well.
And I now have the urge to undertake a similar, mad journey! Which tells me the book did it's job!

[Ipswichblade · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can count on one hand the number of books I have given up on in the last 5 years but this is one of them. Great idea but so boring and poorly written. The idea is that three men drive an electic milkfloat from Lowestoft to Lands End. I normally enjoy these road trip type books however this seems to be made up of nights staying in pubs and finding places to recharge the float with rants against random things thrown in. By page 135 the rants had included Morrissons and the supermarket culture and Didcot power station which was ironic as they had used Morissons to charge up and they had used er electricity. In the end I realised I couldn't care less whether they got to Cornwall and with over 500 books waiting to be read it was time to stop!!

[Fatatat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really quite enjoyed this book, I found the description of England and the people they met along the way to be very interesting. It also reminded me that having lived here now for 5 years I still havn't seen half the places they mention and that maybe I should also, though I understand the niceties of slow travel that a milk float would not be the prefered choice. The comic naration was entertaining though I did find that the two authors Ian and Dan had practically the same voice and I gave up distinguishing between the two

[John Kerrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially an account of three men who decided to throw caution to the wind and travel across the country in an electric milk float. Three men In A Float embraces the concept of 'slow travel' in a day and age where everything is designed to be quicker and more convenient. It's funny, inspiring and at times thought provoking. If you take nothing else away from it then it is at the very least a reassurance that you are still allowed to do utterly ludicrous things well into your 30's and 40's.

[Reena · Rating 3 out of 5]

We charged up, cracked open a bottle of champagne and some packs of cheese balls and then turned the float around to go home.

Last line from Three Men on a Float: Across England at 15 mph. A bit of harmless fun, which flipped between amusing and informative. The poo tale pages had me laughing out loud (and in fits of giggles every few seconds afterwards when remembering.) They reminded me of Billy Connolly: http://www.bebo.com/c/video?FlashBoxI...

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this as it was recommended to me, and I have to admit I'm glad I did, although I as a bit sceptical at the beginning of just how intersting could travelling at 15mph across country be? It is original, funny and as it is written from two different points of view it remains fresh and interesting throughout.

[Debbie Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read & well written. Very funny in places. I liked the way the 2 authors alternated the chapters that they wrote. I have now saves an Ebay search for a milk float!
My husband is now reading the book and when he got to Royston announced that the miserable so and so that wouldn't help them was someone who used to work at one of their depots, which I thought was hilarious!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It sounds like one of those "we have a wacky premise, let's do it so we can write a book" things. But the journey was interesting, the people met (and borrowed favours from) were great, and we learn about our three men. Good fun stuff.

[Steve]

birthday gift.........

[Binx Gray]

Another humorous Brit travelogue related to, or rather inspired by Three Men in a Boat, but modern (and, of course, quite different.)

[David Bachmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice piece to get a feeling for the English (ah, of course some parts are British ;-) countryside.
In some parts the authors try to push a bit to hard the story of "slow travelling".

[Lizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I rather enjoyed this, made me want to travel in something crazy of my own. The authors have similar ideas about oil, tescos and travel to me. nice easy none taxing read for dinner hour.

[Alice · Rating 1 out of 5]

My mum has this thing where if a book isn't really capturing her attention she will give it one hundred pages before giving up. This one was a slog to 100 but there we are, I'm giving up.

Picked this up at a charity shop a couple of weeks ago to keep me company in a coffee shop whilst I waited for a friend. The premise sounded very funny - it reminded me of Round Ireland With a Fridge which I loved. At first it was great, the fact the expeditioners wanted to conduct travel in an eco friendly way, the idea of slow travel in general, and the story of trying to obtain a milk float were all interesting and funny.

It all went a bit downhill when the journey began. Each leg of the journey consisted of "ooh this milk float is very slow", "are we going to run out of charge", "ooh we have to rewire this person's cooker to charge the float", "let's go get pissed", "oh Christ I'm hungover". Rinse and repeat. Sometimes this cycle was interjected with a bit of a description of someone they encountered on the way, but not in any particularly meaningful way. Which is a shame because what makes these books interesting and exciting tend to be the people and the places and the significance of the journey, not necessarily the journey itself.

Such a shame, this could have been so much more!

[Shahid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine planning a cross-country trip not with spreadsheets and satnavs, but on the back of a beer mat, then actually going through with it—in a 1958 electric milk float. That’s exactly what Dan Kieran and Ian Vince did, and Three Men in a Float is the delightfully absurd, surprisingly touching chronicle of that journey.

This book isn’t just a quirky travelogue—it’s a love letter to a slower, forgotten England. With a top speed of 15 mph, “The Mighty One” forces its drivers to meander through back lanes, encounter strangers with time to talk, and soak in the landscape in a way modern travel rarely allows. Along the way, the authors explore ideas of English identity, nostalgia, and the unexpected generosity of strangers.

[Debby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like to browse on secondhand book sites' travel section in the hopes of finding goodreads .This sounded that could be fun.I did not even actually know what a milk float looked like before.This book became my coronavirus read and went as slow as their trip . This was not a book that you want to go on reading to find out what happens next .It was repetitive of the recounts of the electric charge finds,and could not find the humor at the ongoing pub and drinking recounts and yes here and there sprinkled the viewpoints of the authors on some issues as the environment ,or large corporates vs.small local shops . This was a book what I call "neither here or there "

[Some Kind Of Artist · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay book. Was quite funny to start with, as the novelty of travelling in an obsolete and cumbersome vehicle proves to be. However, the issues of driving a milk float, while initially funny begin to get repetitive, typically revolving around finding a power source, finding somewhere to park, difficulties in steering etc. The three men are likeable enough, however it's not enough to make up for the book's monotonous nature. In truth I couldn't finish the book, that's not to say it was a bad book, but I felt I had better things to read.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite enjoyable, but the whole "we got drunk and decided to do this crazy thing" is a bit old now