It all began with a one-way flight to Santiago, Chile in September 2022. A very speculative fact-finding mission with a blog attached (www.thetrevithicktrail.com) has now transformed into my very first book, recounting my adventures across Chile and Bolivia in search of the great Cornish inventor Richard Trevithick and other Cornishmen who left home during the 19th century.
What started as one book has become two. I wrote Long Road to Nowhere (Part One) by accident. it was initially meant to be the first section of a book that tracked my travels from start to finish, but it continued to grow until it became worthy of being published separately from the rest of the story.
My long detour through Chile and Bolivia was never strictly focused on Trevithick, but on other Cornishmen he inspired with his adventures, as well as the harsh realities of mining in South America. Part One acts as the foundation of the wider historical backdrop that Trevithick arrived into: the Spanish empire and its subsequent collapse, one province at a time. I may have arrived to Chile with a plan, but the Universe and Pachamama had been plotting my fate long before I decided to embark upon this journey. The word mining conjures a very different image to the inhabitants of South America, something I learnt almost immediately from the taxi driver who took me from the airport into the city of Santiago. This awareness of the harsh reality of mining was ingrained within so many Chilenos and Bolivianos and it followed me wherever I went. It seemed right to dive into this world and set the scene before getting to grips with Trevithick's story and ironically not being to able to find any info about him in Chile allowed me to do so.
Part One is also a good introduction to my style: witty, honest and rigorously historical without ever being dry. My mission has inadvertently become to make boring history interesting and even at this frankly embryonic stage in my writing career, I think I am succeeding. I hope no one feels aggrieved by the previous statement, that mining history is boring, but it takes all sorts to make a world and not everyone is interested in mining despite how crucial it is to the modern world. This isn't just my opinion, but the feedback I have received from plenty of other, admittedly younger, people.
When I returned home last May, I had to return to my old job at an Indian restaurant to make some money but the idea that I would write a book never wavered. I kept writing. I took the academic side of the project and got myself a place at the University of Exeter's Institute of Cornish Studies. I returned to Peru in January 2024 for a second time with my historian cap on and went down the rabbit hole even deeper.
This is now my obsession. Many were surprised (and impressed too, I hope) that I was able to continue this project, to which I always replied, 'well the alternative is getting a real job, and that's not for me'.
This is just the beginning.