I can move only with the aid of barrels of anti-inflammatory gel, sticking plasters and real ale anaesthetic. Martin and I descend from hours of walking to the small town of Middleton-in-Teesdale. I walk, stiff legged, into the campsite office and a plump, middle-aged woman looks up from her desk and can see the old timer is in trouble. "Oh, what a shame you weren't here last week," she says, pity radiating from behind her horn-rimmed specs. "You've missed him." I look at her, puzzled. "Elvis!" she explains. "You missed Elvis." Oh God, now I'm hallucinating... In Bothy Tales, the follow-up to The Last Hillwalker from bestselling mountain writer John D. Burns, travel with the author to secret places hidden amongst the British hills and share his passion for the wonderful wilderness of our uplands. From remote glens deep in the Scottish Highlands, Burns brings a new volume of tales - some dramatic, some moving, some hilarious - from the isolated mountain shelters called bothies. Meet the vivid cast of characters who play their games there, from climbers with more confidence than sense to a young man who doesn't have the slightest idea what he's letting himself in for...

Like most travelers in Burma, Norman Lewis fell in love with the land and its people. Although much of the countryside was under the control of insurgent armies--the book was originally published in 1952--he managed, by steamboat, decrepit lorry, and dacoit-besieged train, to travel almost everywhere he wanted. This perseverance enabled him to see brilliant spectacles that are still out of our reach, and to meet all types of Burmese, from District officers to the inmates of Rangoon's jail. All the color, gaiety, and charm of the East spring to life with this master storyteller.

An Italian explorer explores America, finding what he believes to be the source of the Mississippi and spending a great deal of time observing Native American tribes. vol. 1 of 2

Approaching the Cosmos Hotel is a compendium of travels, an odyssey through much of the world over many years, a memoir that explores events, cultures, gastronomy, architecture and art through the critical lens of a man who doesn't take himself too seriously. Robert Champ's experiences humorously expose the fools, hypocrites and outre characters he encounters: out-of-their-element expats in Mexico and Spain, tourists in Russia or China who might better have stayed home, rigid officialdom everywhere. Fascinating landscapes and personalities limn these pages, and the armchair adventurer seeking an unconventional narrative will have no trouble finding it here. New Author Bio: Robert Champ has traveled widely in the Americas and Europe, navigated the upper Amazon and the Yangtze, survived narrow, precipitous roads in the Caucasus. Add to this a humorless dominatrix of an Intourist guide, plus true-believing, leering comrades at intimidating customs checkpoints (was I bringing in a Bible? a Playboy?), and we recognize we're in the dark old Soviet Union. The author was born in the Midwest on the eve of WWII. After some Pacific excursions courtesy of the US Navy, he eventually settled in California. He lives in San Francisco.

Adventure writer Richard Grant takes on "the most American place on Earth" the enigmatic, beautiful, often derided Mississippi Delta. Richard Grant and his girlfriend were living in a shoebox apartment in New York City when they decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. This is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place. Imagine A Year In Provence with alligators and assassins, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with hunting scenes and swamp-to-table dining. On a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto, Richard and his girlfriend, Mariah, embark on a new life. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters, blues legend T-Model Ford, cookbook maven Martha Foose, catfish farmers, eccentric millionaires, and the actor Morgan Freeman. Grant brings an adept, empathetic eye to the fascinating people he meets, capturing the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, while tracking its utterly bizarre and criminal extremes. Reporting from all angles as only an outsider can, Grant also delves deeply into the Delta's lingering racial tensions. He finds that de facto segregation continues. Yet even as he observes major structural problems, he encounters many close, loving, and interdependent relationships between black and white families and good reasons for hope. Dispatches from Pluto is a book as unique as the Delta itself. It's lively, entertaining, and funny, containing a travel writer's flair for in-depth reporting alongside insightful reflections on poverty, community, and race. It's also a love story, as the nomadic Grant learns to settle down. He falls not just for his girlfriend but for the beguiling place they now call home. Mississippi, Grant concludes, is the best-kept secret in America.

Growing is a portrait of a young man sent straight out from university to help govern Ceylon. It is doubtful that any Empire at any time has been served by such an intelligent, dutiful, hardworking and incorruptible civil servant as the young Leonard Woolf. He was determined to do what was good but discovered for himself that colonial rule, be it ever so high-minded, is fated to do wrong. Growing is also a deeply affectionate account of the mystery, magic and savage beauty of Ceylon at the turn of the century, an island whose diverse beliefs and cultures Woolf had the time and wit to explore in detail.

..".I know the risks, and moderate them when I can, but still I press on, even into adversity. There are very few things I fear, and even this situation was not one of them.

But still...every now and then...just once and a while...

I wonder...I question...I seek to understand why...

Beaten to the edge of rationality, stunned beyond the capability of comprehension, between racking sobs and painful gasps for breath I screamed into the chaos,

'What in the bloody hell am I doing out here?'

I was not really expecting an answer..."

Through a series of adventures told with humor and passion, "Life is a Road, Get on it and Ride" captures the essence of the motorcycling experience and carries the reader where few have ventured before. Take a wild ride into the magical worlds along the highways of America and a passionate tour through the mysterious soul of an avid motorcycle rider. Experience what one reader calls, "A little bit of Jung, a little bit of Freud, and a little bit of rock and roll." (Doc D)

In 1932 the young writer and political activist CLR James arrived in London from his native Trinidad. During his first weeks in the city he wrote a series of essays about his impressions and experiences for publication back home in the Port of Spain Gazette. Seventy years later, these pieces, newly transcribed from archives in the Caribbean, are published for the first time as a collection, with an extensive introduction and notes. Letters from London reveals CLR James' first encounter with the colonial metropolis and the values that had already shaped his intellectual development in Trinidad. Drawn to London's literary and political avant-garde, he describes life in Bloomsbury, arguments with Edith Sitwell, visits to theatres, museums and concert halls, and his seminal friendship with the great West Indies cricketer, Learie Constantine. Initially in awe of London, James soon develops a critical stance towards the city and its once mysterious people, analysing their drab architecture, shallow newspapers and repressed social relations. 'Londoners have had sixty years of compulsory education and all the advantages of a great modern city,' he writes. 'When you look at the intellectual quality of the people, you are astonished.' A resurrected 'classic' of considerable importance, Letters from London provides a hitherto inaccessible picture of the young CLR James and his formative period. This collection will appeal not just to Jamesites, but to scholars of colonial and post-colonial history and those interested in London.

Letters by Mr. Eyre about religious observation in New York.

Raised on its banks and an avid sailor, Caroline Crampton sets out to rediscover the enigmatic pull of the Thames by following its course from the river's source in a small village in Gloucestershire, through the short central stretch beloved of Londoners and tourists alike, to the point where it merges with the North Sea. As she navigates the river's ever-shifting tidal waters, she seeks out the stories behind its unique landmarks, from the vast Victorian pumping stations that carried away the capital's waste and the shiny barrier that holds the sea at bay, to the Napoleonic-era forts that stand on marshy ground as eerie relics of past invasions. In spellbinding prose, she reveals the histories of its empty warehouses and arsenals; its riverbanks layered with Anglo-Saxon treasures; and its shipwrecks, still inhabited by the ghosts of the drowned. The Way to the Sea is at once a fascinating portrait of an iconic stretch of water and a captivating introduction to a new voice in British non-fiction.

"Sometimes there were only two and sometimes there were four, but usually there were three of us..." During his years as a schoolboy, a student and then a young dentist in the 1960s, John Furniss and his friends took every opportunity to escape from their work and studies and go climbing together, first in England, Wales and Scotland and later tackling the more challenging peaks of the Austrian and German Alps. Adding the vertical metres together, during that fondly remembered decade they scaled more than 13 times the height of Mount Everest. They were years of adventure and daring, featuring occasional narrow squeaks and some amusing brushes with the local language and culture. Most of all they were years of comradeship, which John still remembers with great fondness more than forty years on.

'It has been hand-planted by Tsarinas and felled by foresters. It has been celebrated by peasants, worshipped by pagans and painted by artists. It has self-seeded across mountains and rivers and train tracks and steppe and right through the ruined modernity of a nuclear fall-out site. And like all symbols, the story of the birch has its share of horrors (white, straight, native, pure: how could it not?). But, maybe in the end, what I'm really in search of is a birch that means nothing: stripped of symbolism, bereft of use-value . . . A birch that is simply a tree in a land that couldn't give a shit.' The birch, genus Betula, is one of the northern hemisphere's most widespread and easily recognisable trees. A pioneer species, the birch is also Russia's unofficial national emblem, and in The White Birch art critic Tom Jeffreys sets out to grapple with the riddle of Russianness through numerous journeys, encounters, histories and artworks that all share one thing in common: the humble birch tree. We visit Catherine the Great's garden follies and Tolstoy's favourite chair; walk through the Chernobyl exclusion zone and among overgrown concrete bunkers in Vladivostok; explore the world of online Russian brides and spend a drunken night in Moscow with art-activists Pussy Riot, all the time questioning the role played by Russia's vastly diverse landscapes in forming and imposing national identity. And vice-versa: how has Russia's dramatically shifting self-image informed the way its people think about nature, land and belonging? Curious, resonant and idiosyncratic, The White Birch is a unique collection of journeys into Russia and among Russian people.

A SUNDAY TIMES BEST PAPERBACK OF 2021 * Shortlisted for the 2021 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year prize * A critically-acclaimed Sunday Times, Spectator and Independent Book of 2020 * Now with colour photography by Michael Turek 'Richly absorbing... An impressive exploration of Siberia's terrifying past.' Guardian 'Evocative and wonderfully original.' Colin Thubron __________ Siberia's expansive history is traditionally one of exiles, bitter cold and suffering. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote and beautiful landscape are pianos created during the boom years of the nineteenth century. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos made the journey into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is remarkable. That they might be capable of making music in such a hostile landscape feels like a miracle. The Lost Pianos of Siberia is an absorbing story about a piano hunt - a quixotic quest through two centuries of Russian history and eight time zones stretching across an eleventh of the world's land surface. It reveals not only an unexpected musical legacy, but profound and brave humanity in the last place on earth you might expect to find it. __________ What readers are saying about The Lost Pianos of Siberia: ***** 'You know a book's good when, on finishing it, you just want to start again.' ***** 'Beautifully written, full of compelling anecdotes celebrating Siberia's extraordinary history.' ***** 'The most unusual and intelligent way to tell a travel story.'

Cv Publications series of Guides to English counties is launched with my survey of Oxfordshire. It has been a journey of discovery. Rather than just passing from point A to B my excursions followed an ad-hoc schedule of diverse routes. I found myself turning down obscure side lanes leading to little villages hidden in a marvellous landscape of deep countryside. Documenting over one hundred centres the county gradually revealed itself as largely unspoilt by the industrial sprawl. Oxford itself is of course very lively and cosmopolitan, but communications and facilities are as good in the many market towns. I was really interested to note the range of properties both old and new and the particular character of an area. I hope that my guide provides details and insights that will assist your own enquiries for a new location' - Sarah James.

An English lawyer travels extensively around the world, and discusses the leg of his journey that took him to America, visiting New York on his way to Canada; in NYC, he observes manners and architecture; up North, he discusses the landscape and some agricultural/economic matters.

The Inside Passage to Alaska, with its outer fringes and entailments, is a very complicated sea-route. Parts of it are open ocean, parts of it no wider than a modest river, and it has been in continuous use for several thousand years. Its aboriginal past - still tantalizingly close to hand - puts the inside passaged on terms of close kinship with the ancient sea of the Phoenicians and the Greeks. This book is much more than a book about a sea voyage; it is about Jonathan Raban's journey home to his father who is dying; about his crumbling relationship with his wife and also about the historical journey of the maddening Vancouver in his search for the North West Passage.

One summer, Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way - a challenging 256-mile route usually approached from south to north, with the sun, wind and rain at your back. However, he resolved to tackle it back to front, walking home towards the Yorkshire village where he was born, travelling as a 'modern troubadour', without a penny in his pockets and singing for his supper with poetry readings in village halls, churches, pubs and living rooms. Walking Home describes his extraordinary, yet ordinary, journey of human endeavour, unexpected kindnesses and terrible blisters. The companion volume, Walking Away, is published in June 2015.