'He appeared, without a word, in the tent's entrance, covered in ice. He looked like anyone would after spending over twenty-four hours in a hurricane at over 8,000 metres. In winter. In the Karakoram. He was so exhausted he couldn't speak.' Of all the games mountaineers play on the world's high mountains, the hardest - and cruellest - is climbing the fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres in the bitter cold of winter. Ferocious winds that can pick you up and throw you down, freezing temperatures that burn your lungs and numb your bones, weeks of psychological torment in dark isolation: these are adventures for those with an iron will and a ruthless determination. For the first time, award-winning author Bernadette McDonald tells the story of how Poland's ice warriors made winter their own, perfecting what they dubbed 'the art of suffering' as they fought their way to the summit of Everest in the winter of 1980 - the first 8,000-metre peak they climbed this way but by no means their last. She reveals what it was that inspired the Poles to take up this brutal game, how increasing numbers of climbers from other nations were inspired to enter the arena, and how competition intensified as each remaining peak finally submitted to leave just one awaiting a winter ascent, the meanest of them all: K2. Winter 8000 is the story of true adventure at its most demanding.

As Suid-Afrikaner wat in Engeland woon, het André Pretorius die geleentheid om plekke te besoek wat vir die meeste van ons net drome bly. Maar met sy uitstekende skryfwerk bring hy in hierdie boek talle van die eksotiese plekke naby sy lesers.

Hy laat ons deel in die soektog na ’n kelim in die mark van Marrakesj, in die nostalgie van Nobelpryswenner Orhan Pamuk se Istanboel, in die verhewe skoonheid van die St. Pieterskerk in Rome en in ’n bootrit op die magtige Irrawaddy-rivier in Birma gedurende die reënseisoen wanneer dit voel asof die waters van hemel en aarde versmelt.

Daar is ook vermaaklike oomblikke, soos wanneer hy aan ’n wynproe-cum-marathon in die Medoc-vallei deelneem (met voorspelbare gevolge) en wanneer hy met net ’n klein lappie as bedekking dit na ’n openbare bad in Boedapest waag.

A New York Times Bestseller To some people, Florida is a paradise; to others, a punch line. As Oh, Florida! shows, it's both of these and, more important, it's a Petri dish, producing trends that end up influencing the rest of the country. Without Florida there would be no NASCAR, no Bettie Page pinups, no Glenn Beck radio rants, no USA Today, no "Stand Your Ground," ...You get the idea. To outsiders, Florida seems baffling. It's a state where the voters went for Barack Obama twice, yet elected a Tea Party candidate as governor. Florida is touted as a carefree paradise, yet it's also known for its perils--alligators, sinkholes, pythons, hurricanes, and sharks, to name a few. It attracts 90 million visitors a year, some drawn by its impressive natural beauty, others bewitched by its manmade fantasies. Oh, Florida! explores those contradictions and shows how they fit together to make this the most interesting state. It is the first book to explore the reasons why Florida is so wild and weird--and why that's okay. But there is far more to Florida than its sideshow freakiness. Oh, Florida! explains how Florida secretly, subtly influences all the other states in the Union, both for good and for ill.

8000 miles from home

1085 calories a day

3 months to write the novel that would make her name

At least that was the plan. But when Nell Stevens travelled to Bleaker Island in the Falklands (official population: two) she didn’t count on the isolation getting to her . . .

Hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a book about loneliness and creativity. It is about discovering who you are when there’s no one else around. And it’s about what to do when a plan doesn’t work: ultimately Nell may have failed to write a novel, but she succeeded in becoming a writer.

The Duke of Pirajno arrived in North Africa in 1924. For the next eighteen years his experiences as a doctor in Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland, provided him with opportunities and experiences rarely given to a European. He brings us stories of noble chieftains and celebrated courtesans, of Berber princes and Tuareg entertainers, of giant elephants, and a lioness who fell in love with the author.

With a new introduction by the author

When Dreams Collide is Nicholas Allan's intimate pilgrimage across the former states of Yugoslavia. Shedding the received knowledge of headlines, he explores the splintered co-evolution of these lands over the last ten centuries, guided by the inimitable Rebecca West's masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Written 80 years in the past, West's account serves as a fascinating reference for the optimistic interwar years of the 20th century between the Ottoman decline and the Nazi onset. The evolving balancing act of Tito's Yugoslav experiment and the atrocities following its break-up were still to come. Collapsing empires and proud young nations, monasteries and mosques, brotherhood, hatred, war, music, frescoes, food, costume, people, mountains, rivers and seas, the distant rumbles of the centuries take many forms. At a turning point in his own life, Allan is drawn to explore this complex area, through the lens of his part Eastern European heritage. He records personal encounters and richly drawn characters interwoven with history and art, politics and religion (too often one and the same). Enhanced with delightful hand-drawn maps of the Balkans including Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. 73 informative photograph's showing some the areas key historical figures including Ibrahim Rugova, Hitler, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, Tito, Draza Mihailovic, Slobodan Milosevic, Alecksandar Vucic, Alija Izetbegovic, Radovan Karadzic, Ante Pavelic, Franjo Tudjman, and Fitzroy Maclean.

Kangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world and a notoriously difficult and dangerous mountain to climb. First climbed from the west in 1955 by a British team comprising Joe Brown, George Band, Tony Streather and Norman Hardie, it waited over twenty years for a second ascent. The third ascent, from the north, was made in 1979 by a four-man team including the visionary British alpinist Doug Scott. Completed before his death in 2020, and edited by Catherine Moorehead, Kangchenjunga is Doug Scott's final book. Scott explores the mountain and its varied people - the mountain sits on the border between Nepal and Sikkim in north-east India - before going on to look at Western approaches and early climbing attempts on the mountain. Kangchenjunga was in fact long believed to be the highest mountain in the world, until in the nineteenth century it was demonstrated that Peak XV - Everest - was taller. Out of respect for the beliefs of the Sikkimese, no climber has ever set foot on the very top of Kangchenjunga, the sacred summit. Scott's own relationship with the mountain began in 1978, three years after his first British ascent of Everest with Dougal Haston. The assembled team featured some of the greatest mountaineers in history: Scott, Joe Tasker, Peter Boardman and Georges Bettembourg. The plan was for a stripped-down expedition the following spring - minimal Sherpa support, no radios, largely self-financed. It was the first time a mountain of this scale had been attempted by a new and difficult route without the use of oxygen, and with such a small team. Scott, Tasker and Boardman summited on 16 May 1979, further consolidating their legends in this golden era. Kangchenjunga is Doug Scott's tribute to this sacred mountain, a paean for a Himalayan giant, written by a giant of Himalayan climbing.

Beautifully evocative of the music, people, and culture of one of the most fascinating countries in the world, this book is essential reading for Cuba's growing band of supporters and visitors. A travelogue detailing two separate missions for musician and writer Rupert Mould, this explores some of the biggest names in Cuban music while seeking out an increased personal understanding of two of Cuba's most influential revolutionaries, Ernesto Che Guevara and Jose Marti. In the course of this book much of the essential character of Cuba, her people, her music, and history are sensitively portrayed.

In Bed with the Atlantic is a travel memoir of a young woman, Kit Pascoe, as she goes from never having stepped on a yacht, to sailing over 18,000 miles - across the Atlantic, around the Caribbean and then back - in three years with her partner. At first, she was dogged by doubt, a belief that she wasn't a `sailor', never would be and that she was in no way capable of such an undertaking. She believed that the ocean was out to get her, that weather needed to be battled and that she would forever be ruled by the anxiety that plagued her. Woven into the narrative of the journey's progression are stories from Kit's childhood and life before the voyage, explaining her battles with anxiety and the feelings of being lost as a graduate in post-recession Britain. The book also relays her struggle with reconciling a life of travel with the expectations and experiences of those back home, at an age when most of her contemporaries were starting corporate careers and families. In her courage to leave everything she knows behind, she learns the history of the islands and their people, swims with turtles, explores strange cave systems, and learns to forage for food straight from the sea. But she also encounters hardships like running out of food and water, battling against storms, trying not to be struck by lightning, and discovering the crippling loneliness of sailing an ocean for months on end. Sailing back to the UK after three years Kit realises the colossal difference that sailing has made to her life and understanding of the world. She ponders how easy it is not to do something, to protect ourselves from risks and ridicule and everything that makes us uncomfortable. But now appreciates that it is only when we take the risk, that we get the reward and that we connect not just with the world at large, but also with ourselves.

The main Camino route is the Camino Frances. This part of the Camino de Santiago traditionally starts in St Jean Pied de Port and finishes in Santiago de Compostela about 780km later, after travelling the breadth of Northern Spain, However, travellers can start anywhere and even continue past Santiago to the sea at Finisterre. Finisterre was thought to be the end of the world in medieval times. Robert France walked the Camino Frances (all the way to Finisterre) in Winter and this book is the result of that adventure. It differs from much of the current literature available in that is written by someone in middle-age (most accounts are from the retired or the gap-year student). It is a reflective and thoughtful account which includes literary references, visual records and information on architecture, monuments and pilgrimages. As an example of how much of a 'cult' this walk has become, there is a community called the Confraternity of St. James, based in London, whose membership has grown from a half dozen to over two thousand during the last thirty years. This will have a wide appeal to all travel enthusiasts the world over as well as modern pilgrims, of whom there are more than one thinks!

"Treasure Hunt" is the story of a national obsession. Dreams of Spanish treasure, of unearned gold at the bottom of the sea, have been a part of the English psyche since long before effective diving equipment was invented. In 1687, Captain William Phips weighed anchor in English waters with an incredible cargo - nearly forty tons of silver and gold, the treasure of the Spanish galleon Concepcion, wrecked over forty years before on a coral reef in the middle of the ocean. This treasure in coins and bullion had been raised by naked divers, unaided by breathing equipment. The great British treasure-hunting boom had begun. Over the next two hundred years, many such adventures, most based on extremely dubious information, were begun, with many fortunes and lives lost in the process. The real boom for underwater treasure hunting took place in the 1690s, with the invention of crude, very dangerous diving equipment. And, with the advent of the stock market, gambling and treasure-hunting became closely connected to the birth of modern capitalism. In the 18th and 19th centuries, treasure-hunting became a professional occupation, with a new breed of diver emerging to salvage the wrecks of English and Dutch East-Indiamen carrying treasure to finance purchases in Asia. World-renowned naval historian Peter Earle returns with an extraordinary and little-known history of a peculiarly English phenomenon - of outstanding bravery, of exceptional recklessness, and above all, of dreams of treasure.

'The frisky Oss appeared - the dancers and drummers in a kind of shamanic trance (induced by a day of drumming, dancing and beer). They were wilder than ever; the atmosphere was positively Bacchanalian and I felt we had all become lost in a kind of collective folk consciousness.' On two wheels across Britain 'Bard on a Bike' Kevan Manwaring searches out the places and people who mark the seasons and cycles in their own special way - in ceremonies and festivals both private and public, large and intimate, ancient and modern. Along the way, he experiences and relates moments of sacred time found in the unlikeliest of places and circumstances, showing how it is a state of mind that can be experienced not only at sacred sites, but in the everyday. A collection of reflections about being fully alive in the Twenty First century, as much a useful guide for the curious, Turning the Wheel is a wise and witty account of a leather-clad time-traveller.

Dr Joan Louwrens was always drawn to wild places, which were balm to her soul. When her husband died, leaving her alone with two small daughters to raise, she threw herself wholeheartedly into ‘adventure medicine’, seeking out the world’s most remote corners – on land and at sea – to practise her healing, both her own and others.

Working in wild places from the Kruger Park to the Australian Outback, the Atlantic Ocean islands, and both the south and north poles, ‘Doctor Joan’ dealt with a vast range of medical issues, from rabies to deep-vein thrombosis, childbirth to wisdom-tooth extraction, catatonia to depression.

Showing an eagerness to learn and a humility that isn’t always a given in her profession, and with a wry eye and a sympathetic outlook, Joan Louwrens has written a memoir that’s a poignant and often funny story of a life lived to the full

Chris Stewart's Driving Over Lemons (9780956003805) told the story of his move to a remote mountain farm in Las Alpujarras - an oddball region of Spain, south of Granada. Funny, insightful and real, the book became an international bestseller. A Parrot in the Pepper Tree, the sequel to Lemons, follows the lives of Chris, Ana and their daughter, Chloe, as they get to grips with a misanthropic parrot who joins their home, Spanish school life, neighbours in love, their amazement at Chris appearing on the bestseller lists . . and their shock at discovering that their beloved valley is once more under threat of a dam. A Parrot in the Pepper Tree also looks back on Chris Stewart's former life - the hard times shearing in midwinter Sweden (and driving across the frozen sea to reach island farms); his first taste of Spain, learning flamenco guitar as a 20-year old; and his illustrious music career, drumming for his school band Genesis (sacked at 17, he never quite became Phil Collins), and then for a circus.

A heart-rending account of a Spanish village torn apart by the coming of the Civil War - A rare humanist and female voice on a war which has otherwise been colonised by political commentary and male voices. A balance to the cruelty of Orwell's Homage to Catalonia - Woolsey, a poet, was married to Gerald Brenan, one of the Bloomsbury set who with the publication of South from Grenada became the English authority on Spain - New afterword by Michael Jacobs, author of The Factory of Light and the current authority on Andalucia - Perfect backlist tie-in to the current wave of highly popular Spanish travel writing

First published more than thirty years ago, Paul Theroux's strange, unique, and hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here Theroux recounts his early adventures on an unusual grand continental tour. Asia's fabled trains -- the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express -- are the stars of a journey that takes him on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.

One winter, Dervla Murphy, the four-footed Hallam (the mule) and her six-year-old daughter Rachel explored 'Little Tibet' high up in the Karakoram Mountains in the frozen heart of the Western Himalayas - on the Pakistan side of the disputed border with Kashmir. For three months they travelled along the perilous Indus Gorge and into nearby valleys. Even when beset by crumbling tracks over bottomless chasms, an assault by a lascivious dashniri, the unnerving melancholy of the Balts - the heroic highland farmers who inhabit the area - and Rachel's continual probing questions, this formidable traveller retained her enthusiasm for her surroundings and her sense of humour. First published in 1977, "Where the Indus is Young" is pure Murphy. 'The grandeur, weirdness, variety and ferocity of this region cannot be exaggerated,' she writes of the sub-zero temperatures, harsh winds and whipping sands that they faced. However much the region may have changed due to current day political situations her descriptions of the mountain splendour and cultures she explores are appropriately timeless.

In this book, written in 1966, Bulpin writes about the hunters, settlers, the Bushmen, Dingane, Shaka, Cetshwayo, the colonial days, the Voortrekkers and the Republic of Natal. A very readable book where the characters and legends come to life as Bulpin tells more stories about the personalities and their adventures in the early days of the region.