I just posted this on the science fiction community lemmy.ml link to post, hadn’t found this community yet.

OK, so first off, as the title says, there will be spoilers in here. So if you’re planning on reading it and haven’t yet already, please stop.

I read the series as a teenager and absolutely love them. Recently, I have taken the time to reread all five of them, and have to say I was slightly disappointed. I still thought that the writing was very amusing, the social commentary was good and the lightly touched philosophical discussions were good as well. My main problem concerns character development, or better said, the complete lack thereof in my opinion. I found that most disturbing into different aspects:

The lack of real, meaningful friendship between characters As an example, Arthur and Ford are supposed to be friends, but from the interaction in the book it seems more like they tolerate each other and don’t really appreciate each other’s presence or influence on their adventures. Every time they get out of touch, they don’t appear to feel sorry about it, and when they see each other again, they are extremely British about it. This also applies to the other characters in my opinion.

** the complete abandonment of the relationship between Arthur and Fenchurch** So, in the first three books, Arthur is like this maladjusted guy, who really doesn’t know what his place in the universe is. This also applies to his personal relationships. Then, he meets a woman that is presented as his soulmate, someone that finally understands him and respects/likes him the way he is. All of a sudden, she disappears into thin air, and she’s only mentioned one more time in the book series. Arthur seems happy to just make sandwiches and doesn’t seem to mourn this loss too much after the initial search. To me, this makes the character rather shallow. I appreciate the author was not trying to write a novel about love in space, or whatever, but still, it feels a bit lacking to me.

I will end my rant here, I am very curious as to your opinions on this matter. Do you feel like I’m just expecting too much from these books or do you tend to agree with these criticisms?

OK, so first off, as the title says, there will be spoilers in here. So if you’re planning on reading it and haven’t yet already, please stop.

I read the series as a teenager and absolutely love them. Recently, I have taken the time to reread all five of them, and have to say I was slightly disappointed. I still thought that the writing was very amusing, the social commentary was good and the lightly touched philosophical discussions were good as well. My main problem concerns character development, or better said, the complete lack thereof in my opinion. I found that most disturbing into different aspects:

The lack of real, meaningful friendship between characters

As an example, Arthur and Ford are supposed to be friends, but from the interaction in the book it seems more like they tolerate each other and don’t really appreciate each other’s presence or influence on their adventures. Every time they get out of touch, they don’t appear to feel sorry about it, and when they see each other again, they are extremely British about it. This also applies to the other characters in my opinion.

the complete abandonment of the relationship between Arthur and Fenchurch

So, in the first three books, Arthur is like this maladjusted guy, who really doesn’t know what his place in the universe is. This also applies to his personal relationships. Then, he meets a woman that is presented as his soulmate, someone that finally understands him and respects/likes him the way he is. All of a sudden, she disappears into thin air, and she’s only mentioned one more time in the book series. Arthur seems happy to just make sandwiches and doesn’t seem to mourn this loss too much after the initial search. To me, this makes the character rather shallow. I appreciate the author was not trying to write a novel about love in space, or whatever, but still, it feels a bit lacking to me.

I will end my rant here, I am very curious as to your opinions on this matter. Do you feel like I’m just expecting too much from these books or do you tend to agree with these criticisms?

Ok so not completely sure this is allowed here, but not against any rules on the sidebar so I’ll give it a go. @mods please remove or message me if not appropriate

I’m always looking for cool new routes (mainly focused on Europe), even if I won’t get to do them in the short-term. I came across this post on Tumblr and really liked the photos. I included one of them in the post. Then I googled it and there is a whole website dedicated to it, complete with an awesome PDF and a lot of GPX files. I want to add that I am in no way affiliated or reimbursed by them for this post. I highly encourage you to check it out!

By the way: it’s a lot of gravel, but they have an asphalt only variant on the site as well.

Maybe include altitude in both metres and feet, otherwise 80% of comments will be about that whole discussion.