Simon Tucker, 4x British Champion, Surf Coach and former European Professional Surfer

A truly wonderful read. Anderson has pulled off with style what so many before him have failed to do. His wonderful observations add humour and his uncanny ability to take the reader to some far flung wave heaven make this book a very worthwhile read indeed. I'm sure this book will be a success amongst surfers and non-surfers alike.

Captures the real thrill of surf travel.

Wavelength Magazine

Described as a surfer's odyssey to find the perfect wave, this book is a strange thing for books about surfing in that's it's actually a good read. It's full of amusing anecdotes about his time travelling the globe, from Scotland to Sri Lanka from J-Bay to Costa Rica. Tom seems to have taken in everywhere and the only reason he's done it is in his quest for the perfect wave. Hailing from Wales, Tom's book makes for a quirky read and is more of a narrative on his life and travels than a bog-standard surfing book. I can imagine reading this sat on the plane heading to Cape Town or a long car journey to Mundaka. It certainly whet my appetite for both surfing and travelling!

There is a hidden world out there: a place of rip-curls and breaks, dreamy-eyed drifters, strange customs, odd locals and an endless quest for adrenaline. Attracted to this world is a cult-like, almost hobo-following of men. They traipse the planet, many shifting from job to job, place to place, relationships left behind, all in search of just one thing: the perfect wave.

Welshman Tom Anderson is one of this strange, slightly crazed breed. These are the select few, the few thousand elite surfers, chasing their dreams and chasing a fantasy, as they hunt for the Shangri-La of surf.

For Anderson, as he recounts in Riding the Magic Carpet with a mix of blokish humour and occasional philosophical musings, this is a dream he has had since childhood, a vision that has sent him spiralling around the globe, from backpacker hostels to backwater bars, as he hunts that mystical break with an eclectic band of (ever-changing) friends.

Part-odyssey, part-memoir, part-travelogue, Riding the Magic Carpet tells of his voyage in the run-up to the ultimate surf: "J-Bay" (Jeffrey's Bay) in South Africa. It's the surfer's mecca. This is a journey that takes us from the freezing winds of the outer Orkneys, through temple point breaks in Indonesia, the beautiful beaches of France, into war-torn Sri Lanka and convalescence and broken bones in Central America.

The motivation, he explains, as he fetches up in one bar after another, is "managing to find waves in places you'd never imagine surfers wanting to go: Lebanon, Columbia, Pakistan, Yemen, Vietnam".

For one of his comrades, even political instability used to be the main factor in determining where to go. "If it's unsafe, and exposed to swell, then it probably has good surf," he said.

The extended road trip, for all its adrenaline and booze, bizarre locals and bureaucracy, is as much an insight into the drifter and dreamer's mentality as it is a surfer's guide.

Looking back into his own childhood, Anderson contemplates his father's surfing career and how, as a child of eight, he had already visited Brazil while most of his schoolmates were just beginning to chase a rugby ball at primary school.

By the time we and Anderson finally reach Jeffrey's Bay, the place has almost become incidental to the journey and its discoveries for, as he continually acknowledges, this life "was lived more wave-to-wave than ever".

Kate Dendle, Surfer, GB Women's Team

Both adventurous and exciting... makes you dream about going on the ultimate surf safari.

Alex Wade, Times Online and Author of Wrecking Ball, winner of Times Book of the Week

There are many books on surfing, but few can be classed as literary.

Writers such as Tom Wolfe and Jack London showed a fascination, if not an absorption, with surfing, and some 20 years ago Cambridge don Andy Martin crafted Walking on Water, a witty account of his efforts to learn to surf in France and Hawaii. More recently Australian writer and surfer Fiona Capp published That Oceanic Feeling, a beautiful narrative capturing the longing for the sea within many of us. American novelist Kem Nunn’s The Dogs of Winter, published in 1997, is one of the few other books tackling surfing that merits the “literary” tag.

That could be about to change with the publication at the beginning of June of Welsh surfer Tom Anderson’s Riding the Magic Carpet. I’m two-thirds through Anderson’s odyssey to surf the perfect rights of South Africa’s Jeffrey’s Bay, and it’s looking good. Review to follow soon...

Wade's subsequent review: Riding the Magic Carpet is the author’s account of an odyssey that takes him far from his home surf of Porthcawl’s Rest Bay, in Wales. Summer trips as a teenager are regularly made to France and then, as Anderson’s ability and desire grows, to one of the world’s best waves, Mundaka in Spain. Anderson is fully aware that he must serve his time before taking on J-Bay, and so makes trips to Sri Lanka and Indonesia, where he surfs another iconic wave, Uluwatu. With each wave that he surfs, his surfing is yet further honed, and his mind prepared, so that he can paddle out at J-Bay, whose presence lurks throughout the book almost as the white whale of Captain Ahab’s insane quest: it is something compulsive, and yet could as easily kill its hunter as yield its pleasures.

A bizarre accident appears to scupper Anderson’s plans, and he is forced to accompany his girlfriend, Breige, on a surf trip throughout Costa Rica and Panama with his leg in plaster. He conveys with admirable honesty the surfer’s desperate frustration at not being able to get in the water because of injury, and yet at this stage another element of Anderson’s character develops, as, watching her every move from the beach, he helps Breige develop her own surfing. The arrival of a sense of selflessness is welcome, because, as with most “quest” narratives, on occasions the refusal to deviate from one’s goal can make for prose that stays too rigidly within its own parameters.

This, though, is a minor quibble. Anderson’s book contains a series of vignettes of life in strange, surf-battered places that will appeal not merely to surfers but to fans of travel writing generally. His journey to the Orkneys, for example, lingers long after the end of Riding the Magic Carpet. By then, one is left admiring Anderson’s drive, the vibrancy and honesty of his book and the simple fact of its existence. Surfing has been poorly served by writers, but here is a book that does the sport justice.

Elliot Dudley, European Longboard Champion

Of all the surf books available today, Riding the Magic Carpet is clearly head and shoulders above the rest - a fantastic read!

Matt Archbold, Pro Surfer

Awesome. It's not often that a book can get you as amped to travel as a good surf movie, but this one does!

Tonnau Magazine

This autobiographical story tells the tale of a grom's Curren-inspired vow to one day surf the dreamy pointbreak waves of J-bay and the determined journeying he undertakes to be fully prepared for the experience. Although perhaps geared more towards those on the periphery of the surfing world, the book is an entertaining mine of information about the geographical, cultural, historical and social quirks of our best known and loved surf travel destinations. Climbing the ladder of surf travel experience, Tom guides the reader through the North of Scotland, France and Spain, Sri Lanka, Indo and Central America; finally reaching his Mecca in the form of South Africa's famed right-hand point. The book will be a nostalgic read for the widely travelled surf rat but still throw up a few surprising new nuggets of info. For those closer to the start of the road it will have the foot soles itching all the way to the travel agent.

Shawn 'Barney' Barron, Pro Surfer

Best book I ever read!

Surf Girl Magazine

Bridging the gap between guidebooks and surf mag travel articles, this is a full-length account of one surfer's ascendance from beginner to expert surfer. Welsh surfer Tom's goal in life to surf J-Bay, but he makes sure he's ready for it by travelling and experiencing waves in as many countries as he can first. From the Orkney Islands to Indo, Tom is stoked on it all. He gives surf-angled history and lore and includes lots of useful snippets of travel information along the way. Well written in an easy-accessible style, it's the kind of book about which any well-travelled surfer would probably say, "I could have written that" but Tom's actually done it, and made it work too. A great way to work out your own surf goals and plan of action, this will definitely (re-)ignite your surfing wanderlust. Beware - if you have a full time job, you will seriously consider jacking it in! Total escapism.