Burnham Boy

Something of a wanderer Burnham Boy Peter Lumley has often taken a path not always plainly there. This warts-and-all tale is about people and places around Britain and beyond, with reflections from a lucky octogenarian who has been heard to say “it’s not what you’ve got that matters, but just what you do with it that counts.” The story begins in a riverside town and rolls on into the bike, hike, travel and tourism world where along the way he’s reported with words and pictures what beingThere means when meeting people who are helping to make your day.

After starting work on a local weekly newspaper and founding a cycling club in 1953, Peter Lumley has continued to be involved and write about travel and tourism with a bicycle for 65 years. In 1972 he was co-founder of Backpackers Club, the national organisation which today is for those who travel with a small tent visiting places far from roads. Teach Yourself Backpacking has been his top selling book for that recreational pastime.

Awarded the Medal for Services to Tourism by HM the King of Spain, that accolade was for Peter Lumley’s work to broaden awareness of camping and caravanning and holiday travel when editor at Britain’s most-read specialist magazines for those pastimes. For 38 years he has been editor at tradeandindustry b2b, the bike, hike, travel and tourism journal for trade professionals, it’s read on every continent.

The book Burnham Boy traces his life through living on farms and through World War II, then into the fifties when he began work on a newspaper before pedalling his way to places far over the horizon. The yacht racing scene then two wheel sport on the famed Isle of Man TT circuit, this was where Peter Lumley built a freelance business based on his writing and photography, visiting trade shows and public events as far away from home as Taiwan.

He has toured extensively by touring caravan across Europe and Scandinavia, and made long trips on by bicycle or on foot. All this has kept him busy with a notebook and camera, then in 2017, for ninety day from Spring to Autumn he traveled with the family Compass caravan all around Britain, in many places revisiting the scene of previous escapades.