The Ggantija temples on Malta are a little-known gem: the world’s oldest standing stone structures, built 500 years before the pyramids were a spark in a Pharoah’s eye. There isn’t much infrastructure; just a ticket booth and a standalone audioguide. We only had a couple of problems on our first visit: one was the car rally that stopped any buses running, leaving us with a choice between staying overnight or walking through farms back to the capital. The second was the amount of other tourists clutching their Lonely Planet guidebooks.

I’m not the world’s biggest lover of guidebooks: there’s an element of overt safety and homogeneity of experience that I dislike. However you’ll seldom find me without one; to tell you the truth, I was using my

Lonely Planet to research my plans for next month before I began writing this post! Over time I’ve developed a few tricks to guide book use that I’d like to pass on to you — ways to get the most out them without losing the excitement of the unknown.

Get a new guidebook. In fact, buy or borrow two or three recent guidebooks regarding your destination. Things change so quickly — especially in terms of accommodation and restaurant standards — that an old guidebook can spell disaster. You don’t want to be carrying around half a dozen guidebooks though, so find the information you want and rip it out or copy it off into a common-place book. That’s right, rip away! Get rid of the dead weight you’ll never use and highlight what you’re interested in while you’re at it.

If you have time you might want to supplement your print research with information from the internet. This is likely to offer you personal tales, fascinating diversions and things to avoid. Commercial travel sites can offer discounts that you’re unlikely to find on location, especially at the last minute.

The biggest guidebook trap is overload. How much do you really want to see an example of functionalist architecture expressed as a train station? Forget it’s the world’s biggest or best. How much would you like to see another train station? Not that much? I thought so. It’s crazy but it’s true – you don’t have to see everything. I know it feels wrong, but avoid ticking off items. The trick here is prioritising and the guidebook can be your best friend. In fact, a guidebook is best treated like a friend: listen to it carefully, but don’t feel obliged to do everything it says.

Listen to Craig and Linda talk about using guidebooks or review Lonely Planet’s Europe on a Shoestring.

Craig Martin is a regular contributor to the amateur traveler, podcasts at the indie travel podcast and blogs at our crazy travels. Having finished a month’s Baltic holiday, he should be writing some more soon.

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