Will Ferguson travel memoir walks the walk

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Beyond Belfast
A 560-Mile Walk Across Northern Ireland on Sore Feet
By Will Ferguson
Viking Canada, 396 pages, $32

SOME writers face the dawning of middle age by writing about it. Others not only write about it, they take on a personal quest.

American humour king Bill Bryson has done it twice, once walking around England and once walking through the Appalachians. It seems Canada's own Will Ferguson -- humorist and travel memoirist -- is no different.

Few have walked the entirety of the Ulster Way, a 900-kilometre trail through the six counties of Northern Ireland.

And when the mystery of his grandfather's past draws him to this windswept country, Ferguson laces up his boots, puts an ill-packed and far-too-heavy rucksack on his back and sets out across the moors.

"We all wake up at some point, I suppose, and realize that our days of hitting the road, fearless and free, are coming to an end, and any trace of the Gypsy we might have claimed for ourselves is fading, and fading fast."

Having walked the walk, Ferguson tells the tale in Beyond Belfast, a smart, engaging travel memoir about sore feet, Northern Ireland and coming to terms with who you are and from where you came.

A trek involving a long walk and the search for one's family roots may not be an unusual travel memoir theme, but Ferguson manages to keep his story fresh by using his eye for the unusual and his keen sense of irony to good effect.

But don't expect the kind of hilarity that won the Calgary-based author raves for his Leacock Medal-winning first novel, Happiness, or his non-fiction smash How to Be a Canadian. Beyond Belfast is more wry than side-splitting.

Ferguson has previously published comic memoirs of his travels through Japan (Hitching Rides With Buddha) and even his home and native land (Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw).

Here he begins his trek in Belfast, heading north along the coast. He keeps the history lessons blessedly brief but usefully written, giving just enough background without lapsing into a catatonic recitation of dry and dusty facts.

Still, Ferguson is a Canadian explaining Northern Ireland, and his confusion over the blinding contradictions of Irish politics is apparent.

He survives the usual trials of the solitary hiker -- the long and lonely days, the bad food and sore feet, the bad weather. He meets a number of good Samaritans who regularly save him from himself, giving him rides when he gets lost or providing much-needed water after he drinks his full supply.

He refrains from focusing too heavily on the gruelling hikes over rough terrain, using a more tongue-in-cheek tone.

"The rain washed away the fog -- now's there's an Irish sentence -- and the landscape revealed itself," he says, choosing to focus on the natural beauty rather than his own discomfort.

His descriptions are particularly evocative, whether of the countryside or a description of the Irish Troubles.

In this book, his humour is less obvious and more pointed (much like the Irish themselves), introducing a subtlety of wordplay into the story.

Despite the introduction's focus on his search for his family's roots in Belfast, it takes a long time for him to get back to this part of his journey.

This pacing issue doesn't really detract from his writing, but it does leave the reader hanging, and tightening things up could have served his story well.

But when he finally does get to his grandfather's story, it's particularly poignant. Ferguson never met his maternal grandfather, one of the famed Barnardo orphans, who survived many challenges and made a life for himself and his family in Canada.

And although his story doesn't turn out the way Ferguson had imagined, he does the tale justice in its telling.

Beyond Belfast may be more clever than laugh-out-loud funny, but Ferguson's astute observations of social quirks spiked with his sharp wit make it a supremely readable diversion from day-to-day life.

Winnipeg writer Julie Kentner prefers taking a taxi to a long walk.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 18, 2009 B9