Road to ruins (NLS Y9)

Entertaining travel writing

Objectives Resources
We are learning to… • Resource sheets as attached
• analyse and exploit the stylistic • Text-type cards for starter
conventions of travel writing (S7)
• OHP and OHP pens
• appreciate how travel writing can
be entertaining (TLR7) • Mini-wipeboards and pens (optional)

Starter (5 minutes)
• Give pairs three cards, each bearing a snippet from three text-types: geography, holiday
brochure, travel journalism (see resource). Pairs identify which is which. How do they
know? In other words, what are the diagnostic features of each?
• Take feedback and discuss

Know (5 minutes)
• Explain the objectives
• Ask the class what they know about Stonehenge. Have they been there? What was it
like?
• Read class the first three paragraphs of the Road to Ruins text.
• Take further pupil contributions if relevant.

Show (5 minutes)
• Display Road to Ruins OHT and model analysing it with particular attention to how the
author tries to entertain the reader. (See teacher guide sheet)

Share (5 minutes)
• Ask for pupil contributions to your analysis

Pair (5 minutes)
• Now ask pairs to complete the analysis of the OHT for a couple of minutes

Perfect (5 minutes)
• Give pairs a copy of the whole article and assign each pair a couple of paragraphs to
read and to identify a bit where the writer is not entirely serious. How do they know?
How could the bit be re-written to be neutral?

Reflect (12 minutes)

• Take feedback and return to the objectives
• Now tell the class that you missed off the last two sentences of the second-to-last
paragraph (after “hyperactive family”). Ask what might have been in those last two
sentences
• Show second OHT, concealing the bottom half, and tell the class that this is your re-
write of the last two sentences to keep the same information but making it duller
• Ask pairs to discuss how to re-write these sentences to make them fit the style and
attitude of the rest of the article. Pairs could use a mini-wipeboard. (Three minutes)
• Take feedback, then reveal and discuss the original sentence

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 Road to ruins (NLS Y9)
Copy onto card and cut into strips – one set per pupil pair

With one of the most spectacular coastlines in France

encompassing granite cliffs, rocky inlets, sandy bays and
colourful fishing harbours, Brittany boasts a proud sea-
faring tradition.

Brittany is a peninsula and because it is almost

surrounded by water, its weather often changes. The
Western coast is often damp and misty – especially during
late Autumn and early Spring.

Leaving Brittany’s coastal port of Roscoff we drove inland

to the historic town of Morlaix and began our hunt for
somewhere to stay. What a delightful and confusing town
Morlaix turned out to be!

With one of the most spectacular coastlines in France

encompassing granite cliffs, rocky inlets, sandy bays and
colourful fishing harbours, Brittany boasts a proud sea-
faring tradition.

Brittany is a peninsula and because it is almost

surrounded by water, its weather often changes. The
Western coast is often damp and misty – especially during
late Autumn and early Spring.

Leaving Brittany’s coastal port of Roscoff we drove inland

to the historic town of Morlaix and began our hunt for
somewhere to stay. What a delightful and confusing town
Morlaix turned out to be!

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 Road to ruins (NLS Y9)

OHT
Road to ruins

...We were among the earliest of the 20th-century Thermos

Folk to visit the site. It was the Beaker Folk who started
building Stonehenge 5,000 years ago. But statistics prove
that it was us Thermos Folk who put this neck of Wiltshire
on the tourist map and created its modern difficulties -
hordes of us, with our flasks and picnics, created by the
explosion of postwar leisure motoring.

Now the experience has been transformed. Any parent who

brakes hard on the A303 these days gets a juggernaut up
their Baby On Board sticker. Instead, you turn on to the
A344 and park for free in a well-concealed car park near
the stones: if you can find a space in summer. Once
arrived, you go through a tunnel under the A344, flanked
by atrocious Conan The Barbarian-style murals, to a rough,
circular path 10 metres from the monument…

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 Road to ruins (NLS Y9)
Teacher guide sheet

Use of first person ‘we’ and ‘us’ to Title evokes ‘road to ruin’, suggesting
personalise the article that disaster is looming

Road to ruins
Article uses a
Jokey contrast combination of
with Beaker Folk. the colloquial and
Self-mockery
…We were among the earliest of the 20th-century formal styles (e.g.
“neck of
Thermos Folk to visit the site. It was the Beaker Wiltshire”
Folk who started building Stonehenge 5,000 years
Slang (from ‘neck ago. But statistics prove that it was us Thermos
of the woods’)
conveys mocking Folk who put this neck of Wiltshire on the tourist
tone again Choice of
map and created its modern difficulties - hordes of exaggerated
term, ‘hordes’,
us, with our flasks and picnics, created by the again carries an
air of
explosion of postwar leisure motoring. (self-) mockery

(Compare with
Off-hand, other possible
mocking tone choices – crowds,
continued here. masses, loads)
“Gets a…up Now the experience has been transformed. Any
their…” makes
reader anticipate parent who brakes hard on the A303 these days Choice of
arse or backside informal,
as completion. gets a juggernaut up their Baby On Board sticker. everyday ‘stones’
This construction rather than
implies the Instead, you turn on to the A344 and park for free technical term.
familiar, rude This enhances air
completion, but in a well-concealed car park near the stones: if you of disrespect?
also implies
mockery of can find a space in summer. Once arrived, you go This loose,
modern styles, punctuation-free
here represented through a tunnel under the A344, flanked by sentence and use
by the familiar of ‘you’ enhances
sticker atrocious Conan The Barbarian-style murals, to a the off-hand,
weary tone.
Compare with:
This might
rough, circular path 10 metres from the “Shortly after the
suggest A344 turning off
sensitivity to monument…. the A303, there is
environment; but a free car park
it also implies that is very close
that the to Stonehenge,
Stonehenge but is easy to
managers are miss.”
being crafty and
trying to conceal
the attraction
from visitors

Compare with: “The car park connects to Stonehenge by a brightly painted tunnel.”

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 Road to ruins (NLS Y9)
Road to ruins
Plans are afoot to transform Stonehenge in the next few years. John Ezard visits the
focus of this weekend's summer solstice.

The Guardian, Saturday June 21, 2003

You still feel it, however long it is since you last saw Stonehenge - an odd lurch in
the pit of the stomach when your car crests Countess Hill on the A303 and it first
comes into view: this little cluster of part-broken stone toadstools in the middle of
open countryside.

The lurch in the stomach is as primitive as the instinct for flight, but opposite to it.
This is the urge to get closer, to look, possibly to take part with other people in
some ceremony whose moves, words and purposes have been forgotten. It is a
profound, formless urge, hardly ever felt in daily modern life, but one element of it
is familiar from other travel experiences. This element is awe at seeing a wonder of
the world, at encountering a great work of human skill and human hands, however
unfathomable the reasons for the labours that went into its creation. Stonehenge is
Britain's most important ancient monument, unique in the world.

I first felt its pull as a schoolboy, decades ago, when our Morris 8 came over the
same hill on the A303, then called the A30, the Great West Road from Devon to
London. At that time, when there was virtually no traffic on the roads, my parents'
reaction was uncomplicated. We came to a sudden halt on the grass verge, got out
our Thermos flask and sandwiches, walked over and gawped. We could have
touched - even hugged - the stones with nobody and nothing to stop us.

We were among the earliest of the 20th-century Thermos Folk to visit the site. It
was the Beaker Folk who started building Stonehenge 5,000 years ago. But
statistics prove that it was us Thermos Folk who put this neck of Wiltshire on the
tourist map and created its modern difficulties - hordes of us, with our flasks and
picnics, created by the explosion of postwar leisure motoring.

Now the experience has been transformed. Any parent who brakes hard on the
A303 these days gets a juggernaut up their Baby On Board sticker. Instead, you
turn on to the A344 and park for free in a well-concealed car park near the stones:
if you can find a space in summer. Once arrived, you go through a tunnel under the
A344, flanked by atrocious Conan The Barbarian-style murals, to a rough, circular
path 10 metres from the monument. This is where the stones still rule. Here, in this
small fenced enclave with no intrusive signage or litter bins, the stones are free to
impose themselves on you.

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 Road to ruins (NLS Y9)
The bigger stones are pinched at the waist or the neck, so that their tops look
bulbous, knobbled into odd shapes. Sparrows peck for grubs in the crevices, an
aerobatic cloud of starlings prattles overhead. Standing in front of one of the
trilithons, a US sightseer asks his son, "Want me to look as if I'm holding it up?"
No, indicates the son with the camera, I don't think you do that here. This is a place
that may once have been a cathedral, and was certainly a cemetery.

Within the next four to six years, the Stonehenge experience will be transformed
drastically. The awesome view from Countess Hill will disappear - a regrettable
loss. That stretch of the A303 will be tunnelled; the A344's traffic will be diverted,
restoring comparative silence. Motorised visitors will be diverted to a mammoth
new £57m visitor centre near the Countess A303 roundabout about two miles
away. From there, they will be taken closer to the monument by bus; but they will
be expected to walk 20 minutes (about a mile) there and 20 minutes back.

For those with stamina, fitness and time, the gains will be immense. With roads
gone and fences down, future visitors should be able to roam this National Trust
landscape of 590 hectares (1,450 acres) on footpaths and tracks as if it were a
history park. Exploring this network of remnants should fill a week's break for the
most hyperactive family.

The bookshop bristles with stimulating, unproven explanations for Stonehenge.

Take your pick from primeval computers, celestial observatories, calendars, sun
worship, human sacrifice, ley lines, orgies, aliens, and psychic powerhouses. The
down-to-earth message, from a loyal and nostalgic descendant of the Thermos
Folk, is this: if you want a quick, restricted but rewarding look at the place and its
mysteries without having to leave your car and walk for miles, get there very
quickly, before English Heritage starts digging up the roads.

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 Road to ruins (NLS Y9)
OHT

Exploring this network of remnants

should fill a week's break for the most
hyperactive family. They will be able to
explore freely, although they will still not be
allowed to climb on the stones, have picnics on
them, or deface them in any way. They will find
the new arrangement very enjoyable.

Exploring this network of remnants

should fill a week's break for the most
hyperactive family. As long as they don’t
clamber on the stones, inscribe them with ‘Jen
loves Sam’, or use them as tables for eating their
Macdonald’s equivalent of a picnic, then they will
be free to explore to their hearts’ content. What
could be more wonderful than that?

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 Road to ruins (NLS Y9)
Expand to A3 and display

We are learning to...

• analyse and exploit the stylistic

conventions of travel writing

• appreciate how travel writing can be

entertaining.

Key words:
• irony • humour • mockery
• description • detail • exaggeration

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