Isolated and terrifyingly cold, the South Pole is every adventurer's dream and every adventurer's nightmare. In a bid to carry messages of peace to speak out at the Pole to help the harmony of the Earth, Tess and partner Pete would venture to the very end of the world. They join the historic South Pole Race, to compete with the likes of Olympic champion James Cracknell and Ben Fogle in the first race to the South Pole since Scott and Amundsen. To complete this mission they would have to battle severe medical problems, lack of money, hardship and deprivation. For Tess it was more than combating cold hands with a warm heart, it was a journey to push out the reaches of the human mind.

The French Jesuit Pierre-Francois-Xavier de Charlevoix's 1744 journal of his voyage through French North America-New France, Louisiana, and the Caribbean-is among the richest eighteenth-century accounts of the continent's colonization, as well as its indigenous inhabitants, flora, and fauna. Micah True's new translation of this influential text is the first to appear since 1763. It provides the first complete and reliable English version of Charlevoix's journal and reveals the famous Jesuit to have been a better literary stylist than has often been assumed on the basis of earlier translations. Complemented by a detailed introduction and richly annotated, this volume finally makes accessible to an Anglophone audience one of the key texts of eighteenth-century French America.

Originally published in 1904. Author: Rudyard Kipling Language: English Keywords: Literature Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

"Exciting, funny, and occasionally heart-stopping ... readers can stay home and dry, but feel like they are on the high seas."-BOOKLIST A man and his chicken sail 45,000 nautical miles in this powerful story of following your dreams no matter what stands in your way. When Guirec Soudee was 21 years old, he bought a 30-foot sailboat and set out across the Atlantic, despite having only sailed a dinghy before. His only companion? His plucky pet hen, Monique. Guirec never intended to sail the world with a chicken, but after reaching the Caribbean, he and Monique made for Greenland--and emerged from the pack ice 100 days later. Their next goal? San Francisco. Then, Antarctica. But first, could they navigate the treacherous Northwest Passage? One thing was for sure: Monique would help her trusty skipper by laying an egg! Heart-stopping adventure story: navigating treacherous icebergs with a chicken on the mast is just one of many nail-biting maneuvers from this action-packed book. Perfect for readers of The Art of Racing in the Rain: Guirec and Monique's bond is unlike anything you've ever seen before. Inspirational: Guirec shows that all you have to do is believe to achieve something big. Photographs and maps: show the epic voyage and provide breaks in the text. Guirec and Monique's unbelievable journey won the hearts of people all over the world and caused a social media frenzy when it happened. Now, in their long-awaited first book, readers will uncover their gripping voyage from start to finish.

The land of the Iranians, known to European travelers for centuries as Persia, is a land riven by mountain-ranges, made inhospitable by deserts, yet rich in plains, forests and jewel-like gardens. Home to the most sublime architecture in the world, and a breeding ground for poets, Empires, Mystics and saints, it has an enduring and invincible fascination. David Blow enriches our understanding with his knowledgeable selection of the best of three thousand years of descriptive writing. He allows us to visit the courts of Cyrus and Xerxes, to ride out with the Parthians and Sassanians and to make a passing acquaintanceship with both the Shah and the late Ayatollah Khomeini, with Hafiz, and with Omar Khayyam.

In Love with Paris is an irresistible combination of 50 mouth-watering sweet and savoury recipes and heart-melting love stories. Take a culinary walk through the city of love and its most romantic spots, and enjoy classic French cuisine, from croque madame and coq au vin, to madeleines and lemon tarts. Immerse yourself in the city that inspired writers and photographers like Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Victor Doisneau, and visit the iconic locations of films like The Lovers on the Bridge and Amelie. In Love with Paris will make you fall in love with Paris - again and again.

At a time of climate crisis, isolation and social breakdown, Driving with strangers is a manifesto to alter how we think about our place in the world. Veteran hitchhiker and lifelong aficionado of hitchhiking culture, Purkis journeys through the history of hitchhiking to explore the unique opportunities for cooperation, friendship, sustainability and openness that it represents. Join Purkis on the kerbside, in search of Woody Guthrie as he examines the politics of the travelling song, deep on a Russian hitch-hiking expedition, or considering the politics of travel and risk on the 'Highway of Tears' in British Columbia, Canada. The reader is taken on a panoramic road trip through a century of hitchhiking across different decades, countries and continents. Purkis, a self-styled 'vagabond sociologist', is the perfect passenger to accompany you on a journey away from isolation, social distancing, closed borders and into a better understanding of why and how strangers can enrich our lives. -- .

Riddoch on the Outer Hebrides is a thought-provoking commentary based on broadcaster Lesley Riddoch's cycle journey through a beautiful island chain facing seismic cultural and economic change. Her experience is described in a typically affectionate but hard-hitting style; with humour, anecdote and a growing sympathy for islanders tired of living at the margins but fearful of closer contact with mainland Scotland.

A woman’s tale of the transformative power of walking Britain’s ancient pilgrim paths. ‘Phoebe Smith is a splendid writer and an inspiring traveller’ Bill Bryson Faced with turning 35 – and seeing friends settle down, get married, have kids – Phoebe Smith found herself ending a long‐term relationship, considering giving up her dream job and asking herself what actually is the point of… everything? On an assignment to walk the most famous pilgrimage in the world – the Camino de Santiago, in northern Spain – Phoebe experiences a moment of self-discovery shared by many who travel these ancient trails. And so, having spent a lifetime in solo exploration of unfamiliar places, she suddenly resolved to return to her native Britain and follow in the footsteps of generations of saints (and sinners) in the hope of ‘finding herself’ once more and confronting the things that scared her the most. But what is a pilgrimage? Why are so many people undertaking them now? How do you become a pilgrim? And how do you know what you are seeking? These are the questions Phoebe grapples with as she undertakes a series of journeys – some familiar and some little-known – the length and breadth of the British Isles. Along the way she contemplates love and loss in her life, the role of contemplation and silence in pilgrimage, and the sudden camaraderie shared endeavour brings. Until, high on a windswept cliff, she arrives at an epiphany: the ending of one trail is always the start of another.

'Will someone pay for the spilled blood? No. Nobody.' Mikhail Bulgakov wrote these words in Kiev during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War. Since then Ukrainian borders have shifted constantly and its people have suffered numerous military foreign interventions that have left them with nothing. As a state, Ukraine exists only since 1991 and what it was before is controversial among its people as well as its European neighbours. Writing in a simple and vivid way, Jens Muhling narrates his encounters with nationalists and old Communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, archaeologists and soldiers, all of whose views could hardly be more different. Black Earth connects all these stories to convey an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine - a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the centre of countless conflicts of opinion.

In the summer of 1936, W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice visited Iceland on commission to write a travel book, but found themselves capturing concerns on a scale that were far more international. 'Though writing in a "holiday" spirit,' commented Auden, 'its authors were all the time conscious of a threatening horizon to their picnic - world-wide unemployment, Hitler growing everyday more powerful and a world-war more inevitable.' The result is the remarkable Letters from Iceland, a collaboration in poetry and prose, reportage and correspondence, published in 1937 with the Spanish Civil War newly in progress, beneath the shadow of looming world war.

This volume is not a guide of where to stay and what to do, rather it is a collection of writing that aims to invest the traveller with a cultural and historical background to Croatia, which will give life and meaning into the sights, sounds and tastes that the traveller will experience.

Bestselling travel writer Richard Grant "sensitively probes the complex and troubled history of the oldest city on the Mississippi River through the eyes of a cast of eccentric and unexpected characters" (Newsweek). Natchez, Mississippi, once had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in America, and its wealth was built on slavery and cotton. Today it has the greatest concentration of antebellum mansions in the South, and a culture full of unexpected contradictions. Prominent white families dress up in hoopskirts and Confederate uniforms for ritual celebrations of the Old South, yet Natchez is also progressive enough to elect a gay black man for mayor with 91% of the vote. Much as John Berendt did for Savannah in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and the hit podcast S-Town did for Woodstock, Alabama, so Richard Grant does for Natchez in The Deepest South of All. With humor and insight, he depicts a strange, eccentric town with an unforgettable cast of characters. There's Buzz Harper, a six-food-five gay antique dealer famous for swanning around in a mink coat with a uniformed manservant and a very short German bodybuilder. There's Ginger Hyland, "The Lioness," who owns 500 antique eyewash cups and decorates 168 Christmas trees with her jewelry collection. And there's Nellie Jackson, a Cadillac-driving brothel madam who became an FBI informant about the KKK before being burned alive by one of her customers. Interwoven through these stories is the more somber and largely forgotten account of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, a West African prince who was enslaved in Natchez and became a cause celebre in the 1820s, eventually gaining his freedom and returning to Africa. With an "easygoing manner" (Geoff Dyer, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition), this book offers a gripping portrait of a complex American place, as it struggles to break free from the past and confront the legacy of slavery.

This exciting new series will bring together both classic texts and the writing of the leading Travel writers working today, which will inform and inspire the inquisitive traveller. It is an essential companion for anyone travelling to Sicily. Selected authors include: Herodotus, Patrick Brydone, Pirandello, Ann Radcliffe and D. H. Lawrence. This new series is not a guide of where to stay and what to do, rather it is collection of writing that aims to invest the traveller with a cultural and historical background to Syria, which will breath life and meaning into the sights, sounds and tastes that the inquisitive traveller will experience.

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.

Joe Tasker lies, struck down by illness, in a damp, bug-infested room in the Himalaya, wondering if he will be well enough to climb Dunagiri, his first venture to the 'big' mountains. One of Britain's foremost mountaineers and a pioneer of lightweight climbing, he is about to attempt one of the first true 'alpine-style' climbs in the Greater Ranges. The Dunagiri attempt forms part of Tasker's striking tale of adventure in the savage arena of the mountains. A superb writer, he vividly describes the first British winter ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, the first ascent of the West Wall of Changabang - considered a 'preposterous' plan by the climbing world - and his two unsuccessful attempts on K2, the second highest mountain on Earth. Savage Arena is both moving and exciting, an inspirational tale of the adventuring spirit which follows its own path, endlessly seeking new challenges, climbs and difficulties to overcome. It is not reaching the summit which counts, it is the journey to it. It is also a story of the stresses and strains of living for long periods in constant anxiety, often with only one other person, and of the close and vital human relationships which spring from those circumstances.

A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable Rivers of England and Wales. In the Victorian era, the name Bradshaw became synonymous with reliable information on travelling the nation's blossoming network of railways. Published in 1904, Canals and Navigable Rivers was the first guide to planning journeys on the inland waterways of England and Wales. Noting bridges, locks, distances and commercial use, it explores the routes, operation and history of the network, and gives commentary on the areas through which it passed. Compiled at a time when the railways had largely supplanted the waterways, it paints a fascinating portrait of the Edwardian canal system as it began to fall into gentle decay. This facsimile edition of the original book now offers a different perspective for canal boaters and walkers, and gives invaluable information about waterways now lost.

When Meryl Urson stepped off a plane for the first time into a steamy Mumbai midnight, little did she know that she’d begun a lengthy love affair with India? It would stretch across innumerable encounters and far into her future. This book is a record of her relationship with the world’s most fascinating country.

The reader is swept from the craziness of a revered guru’s southern headquarters to the turbulent peaks of the northern Himalayas, and through adventures as diverse as the discovery of a secret queen’s bath-house glittering behind a long-locked door, and the toppling of a Karl Marx statue in the middle of a Keralan Communist rally.

Way Out In India is an idiosyncratic view of the diversity of life on the subcontinent through the enchanted eyes of an author in love with both place and people.

In 1995, before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire to move back to the States for a few years with his family, Bill Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite; a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy; place names like Farleigh Wallop, Titsey and Shellow Bowells; people who said 'Mustn't grumble', and 'Ooh lovely' at the sight of a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits; and Gardeners' Question Time. Notes from a Small Island was a huge number-one bestseller when it was first published, and has become the nation's most loved book about Britain, going on to sell over two million copies.

'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.

For the first time in an English language edition published outside Japan, all 55 prints of Hiroshige's 'Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido' are reproduced in full colour, supporting a detailed and intriguing account of the author's rediscovery on foot of the historic 303-mile road from Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto. Remarkably, the Old Tokaido can still be found in many locations and photographs of the modern parallel the old.

..".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)

2011 marks the centenary of the death of Edward Whymper, one of the most important figures in the history of mountaineering. His ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865, and the deaths of four members of his party on the way down, attracted attention throughout the world, bringing him praise and criticism in equal measure. In later years, he largely devoted his life to lecturing and writing guidebooks, touring Britain, Europe and America. Whymper was an early member of the Alpine Club and in the club's archives is a set of magic lantern slides he used to illustrate his lectures. Based on extensive research, former AC Archivist Peter Berg has combined these images with extracts from Whymper's books and diaries and writings by his contemporaries, to recreate the lecture 'My Scrambles amongst the Alps', first given in 1895. These pictures, mostly not seen for 100 years and never been published as a set before, give us a unique glimpse of the mountain world at the end of the 19th century. We visit the Zermatt valley and its peaks, passes and glaciers, experience Whymper's many attempts to climb the Matterhorn, explore the Mont Blanc region, including the ill-fated building of an observatory on the summit, and share some of the joys and sorrows of mountaineering. Setting the lecture in context, is a foreword by the distinguished mountaineer and former AC President, Stephen Venables.

Holloway - a hollow way, a sunken path. A route that centuries of foot-fall, hoof-hit, wheel-roll and rain-run have harrowed deep down into bedrock. In July 2005, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin - author of Wildwood - travelled to explore the holloways of South Dorset's sandstone. They found their way into a landscape of shadows, spectres & great strangeness. Six years later, after Roger Deakin's early death, Robert Macfarlane returned to the holloway with the artist Stanley Donwood and writer Dan Richards. The book is about those journeys and that landscape. Moving in the spaces between social history, psychogeography and travel writing, Holloway is a beautiful and haunted work of art.