Showing titles in Travel Writing & Commentary

New Year's Day, 2009. Somewhere on the bottom of the world, six teams of adventurers and explorers have gathered to race one another, on foot, to the South Pole. It is the first time that anyone has undertaken such a race in almost a hundred years; the first time since the great Norwegian, Roald...

Between 1821 and 1826, the prolific writer and journalist William Cobbett travelled the countryside of the South of England on foot and horseback. Rural Rides is a fascinating account of his journeys, and depicts a way of life in transition, juxtaposing lyrical descriptions of the countryside with criticism of the poverty of agricultural workers. A man of radical politics who encouraged the rural rising of 1830, Cobbett went on to become MP for Oldham and sought to represent the interests of both industrial and agricultural workers. Above all, Rural Rides celebrates agrarian England.

After six years of laying rubber on racetracks and immersing herself in the high octane, adrenaline pumping sport of motorcycle racing, Tiffani was yearning for something new from her life on two wheels. Fortunately (or unfortunately), losing her comfortable office job was the perfect opportunity to do exactly that.

In his latest voyage of discovery, Michael Palin reads his own account of a journey into a "new" Europe. He starts with a simple idea: that only a couple of hours from home is a half of Europe that is for him as unknown and unexplored as the plateau of Tibet or the vastness of the Sahara.

After her plane crashes, a 17-year-old girl spends 11 days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference?

Finally a podcast in Italian, designed for learners of Italian... 100% in slower Italian! Listen to interesting topics and learn about Italy, all while practicing your comprehension, expanding your vocabulary and improving your pronunciation!  Manu Venditti, the founder of Italy Made Easy is a native Italian language lover, with a passion for helping people like you learn, improve, practice and master the Italian language.  For each episode you can download the free accompanying PDF, with the full accurate Italian transcript of the show, along with a series of Listening and Comprehension ...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword “This beautifully written memoir about taking...

It was 1956, and Eric Newby was earning an improbable living in the chaotic family business of London haute couture. Pining for adventure, Newby sent his friend Hugh Carless the now-famous cable - CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE? - setting in motion a legendary journey from Mayfair to Afghanistan, and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, northeast of Kabul. Inexperienced and ill prepared (their preparations involved nothing more than some tips from a Welsh waitress), the amateurish rogues embarked on a month of adventure and hardship in one of the most beautiful wildernesses on earth. 

Brought to you by Penguin From the acclaimed author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia, comes a new journey, following four 19th century elephants marched from the East African coast towards Congo, to tell a heartbreaking story of folly and colonial greed. Featuring immersive field recordings...

Bloomsbury presents The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey by Tim Hannigan, read by Stephen Perring. Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year Award 2024 Tim Hannigan undertakes an epic east–west journey on foot through his own homeland, from the woodlands of the Tamar Valley...

Dead horses, armed border guards and furious Slavs stand in the way. Join Andy on his battered old Suzuki GS1000G as we cross Europe, and ride together through the Iron Curtain to reach the very edge of Asia. Filled with adventure and humor, poignant and accidentally informative, this true-life story tells of travel in an era long gone, when we read paper maps like pirates on the high seas, and friends were made and lost along roads less traveled.

A 2026 Audie Awards Finalist! Stow away with Rick Steves for a glimpse into the unforgettable moments, misadventures, and memories of his 1978 journey on the legendary Hippie Trail. In the 1970s, the ultimate trip for any backpacker was the storied “Hippie Trail” from Istanbul to Kathmandu...

By age 25, Heather Anderson had hiked what is known as the "Triple Crown" of backpacking: the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail - a combined distance of 7,900 miles with a vertical gain of more than one million feet. A few years later, she left her job, her marriage, and a dissatisfied life and walked back into those mountains. In her new memoir, Heather shares her distinct message of courage - her willingness to turn away from the predictability of a more traditional life in an effort to seek out what most fulfills her.

Over the course of twenty years of delivering sailboats to far-flung quaysides, John Kretschmer has had innumerable adventures, both humorous and terrifying. In Flirting with Mermaids, he recounts the most memorable of them. He crosses the Western Caribbean with a crew of eccentric Swedes researching ancient Mayan mariners, lands in Aden at the outbreak of civil war, and endures a North Atlantic crossing during which he discovers the existence of Force 13 winds.

Brought to you by Penguin. At the heart of this book is a highway. The A1; The Great North Road. A 400-mile multiplicity of ancient trackway, Roman road, pilgrim path, coach route and motorway that has run like a backbone through Britain for the last 2,000 years. In this genre-defying and...

A Waterstones Travel Book of the Year 2023 A funny, warm and timely meditation on identity and belonging, following the scenic route along the England–Wales border: Britain’s deepest faultline. There is a line on the map: to one side Wales, small, rugged and stubborn; on the other England...

When our hero, Victor, needs a pseudonym to avoid embarrassing his wife after deciding to pen a book about up-sticking to Greece, he dusts off his original name of V.D. Bucket, the name he was stuck with after being abandoned in a bucket as a baby. As Victor adapts to his adopted homeland, he battles an obsession with the exacting hygiene standards he demanded during his illustrious career as a public health inspector against the rather less exacting standards of rural Greece. His attempts to master the complexities of the language lead to a number of embarrassing misunderstandings.