Pedalling along curvaceous country lanes or freewheeling through valleys and vineyards – earning your supper in this sleepy corner of France is nothing short of a privilege.Tony and Ludmilla have landed a job with a specialist cycling and walking holiday company in the South of France … but that’s not something we can hold against them for too long!They head off to the mediaeval marvel of Cordes-sur-Ciel in the Tarn – a region so achingly beautiful and laden with history and mystery they have to pinch themselves to be sure such a place really does exist.When their cyclists turn up for a week’s pedal-powered adventure they will need a reliable back-up service when they puncture a tyre or come face to jowl with a ‘devil dog’ intent on devouring their panniers. And when their walkers take the wrong trail and find themselves humming Bonnie Tyler’s ’70s hit ‘Lost in France’, they too will need a timely rescue. Well, that’s the theory …

    Join Susan as she recounts her lighthearted ramble of discovery through the historical homes and gardens of art and literary heroes, along ancient footpaths, through wildflower meadows and fields of lambs, into tea rooms, pubs and antique stores. This lovely hard-cover book includes hundreds of photographs and a red ribbon sewn-in book mark. A Fine Romance is a work of art, part love story, part travel guide and all dream come true.

    Filled with photos, you'll see how to convert almost any minivan into a comfortable mini RV camper, perfect for short or long term trips. You'll learn that even on a limited budget, you can quickly put together a minivan camper that'll have a comfortable bed, toilet, small kitchen, fridge, TV, fan, plenty of storage, a portable power supply and more. This book shows all the steps and includes photos and a source list of the gear you've been looking for. If you have a minivan or are thinking about getting one and converting it to a camper, you'll want this book!

     In his time as a uniformed officer Jon seized presidential aircraft, a working tank, cars, lorries, boats and coffins; and uncovered wild animals, killer snakes, bush meat, animal porn, poisonous vodka, dodgy medicine, bootleg prescriptions, pirated pills, toxic alcohol, firearms, side-arms, swords, explosives, stolen gold, dirty money, blood diamonds, child pornography and every drug known to man and a few as yet unknown ones. And the dead? He searched them too. When you’ve confiscated everything from a suitcase full human hair to a live monkey hidden in the lining of someone’s overcoat, you know you can never return to a normal line of work. But then Jon went into undercover customs work, and things became really interesting . . .

    will leave true crime readers with more to ponder than they bargained for' - The HeraldBefore David Wilson became the UK's pre-eminent criminologist, he was just a young boy growing up in the Scottish town of Carluke. When he was a child, the brutal murder of a young woman rocked this small community, but very quickly a man was arrested for the crime, convicted and put behind bars. For most, life slowly carried on - case closed. But there were whispers in the town that the wrong man was imprisoned. Over the years, these whispers grew louder, to the point that any time David would visit, he'd be asked in hushed tones, 'What are you going to do about the Carluke Case?'Carluke believed the real killer had evaded justice. A murderer was still on the loose.Forty years later, it's time for David to return home, and find out the truth.

    Jimmy Nail has been a household name since Auf Wiedersehen, Pet hit our screens in the 1980s. since then, his career as an actor and a musician has put on him on the silver screen alongside Madonna and given him a No. 1 hit single. Success on this astonishing scale was beyond the wildest dreams of the working class lad whose harsh childhood and brutal schooling put him on a collision course with Strangeways. But a short spell in prison helped propel Nail onwards and upwards. With the support of his friends and family, it wasn't long before Jimmy's unique talents and single-minded determination brought him attention of a different kind - and changed his life for ever. In A Northern Soul, Jimmy Nail tells his own vivid story in this intriguing, inspiring and sometimes confounding account of how one man rose to fame and fortune by refusing to be anything but himself.

    Approaching the land that was once home, memories of her childhood merge with the recent events that have set her on this journey.Amy was shaped by the cycle of the seasons, birth and death on the farm, and her father’s mental illness, which were as much a part of her childhood as the wild, carefree existence on Orkney. But as she grew up, she longed to leave this remote life. She moved to London and found herself in a hedonistic cycle. Unable to control her drinking, alcohol gradually took over. Now thirty, she finds herself washed up back home on Orkney, standing unstable at the cliff edge, trying to come to terms with what happened to her in London.Spending early mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, the days tracking Orkney’s wildlife—puffins nesting on sea stacks, arctic terns swooping close enough to feel their wings—and nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy slowly makes the journey toward recovery from addiction.The Outrun is a beautiful, inspiring book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and about the ability of the sea, the land, the wind, and the moon to restore life and renew hope.A Guardian Best Nonfiction Book of 2016Sunday Times Top Ten BestsellerNew Statesman Book of the Year

    The hull glides in silence and with such perfect balance as to report no motion. I sit up for another stroke, now looking down as the blades ignite swirling pairs of white constellations of phosphorescent plankton. Two opposing heavens. ‘Remember this,’ I think to myself.”Few people have ever considered the eastern United States to be an island, but when Nat Stone began tracing waterways in his new atlas at the age of ten he discovered that if one had a boat it was possible to use a combination of waterways to travel up the Hudson River, west across the barge canals and the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and back up the eastern seaboard. Years later, still fascinated by the idea of the island, Stone read a biography of Howard Blackburn, a nineteenth-century Gloucester fisherman who had attempted to sail the same route a century before. Stone decided he would row rather than sail, and in April 1999 he launched a scull beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to see how far he could get. After ten months and some six thousand miles he arrived back at the Brooklyn Bridge, and continued rowing on to Eastport, Maine. Retracing Stone’s extraordinary voyage, On the Water is a marvelous portrait of the vibrant cultures inhabiting American shores and the magic of a traveler’s chance encounters. From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a rower at the local boathouse bequeaths him a pair of fabled oars, to Vanceburg, Kentucky, where he spends a day fishing with Ed Taylor -- a man whose efficient simplicity recalls The Old Man and the Sea -- Stone makes his way, stroke by stroke, chatting with tugboat operators and sleeping in his boat under the stars. He listens to the live strains of Dwight Yoakum on the banks of the Ohio while the world’s largest Superman statue guards the nearby town square, and winds his way through the Louisiana bayous, where he befriends Scoober, an old man who reminds him that the happiest people are those who’ve “got nothin’.” He briefly adopts a rowing companion -- a kitten -- along the west coast of Florida, and finds himself stuck in the tidal mudflats of Georgia. Along the way, he flavors his narrative with local history and lore and records the evolution of what started out as an adventure but became a lifestyle. An extraordinary literary debut in the lyrical, timeless style of William Least Heat-Moon and Henry David Thoreau, On the Water is a mariner’s tribute to childhood dreams, solitary journeys, and the transformative powers of America’s rivers, lakes, and coastlines.From the Hardcover edition.

    Often found in the most remote and dramatic reaches of our shores, these colonies are landscapes shaped not by us but by the birds.In 2015, Stephen Rutt escaped his hectic, anxiety-inducing life in London for the bird observatory on North Ronaldsay, the most northerly of the Orkney Islands. In thrall to these windswept havens and the people and birds that inhabit them, he began a journey to the edges of Britain. From Shetland, to the Farnes of Northumberland, down to the Welsh islands off the Pembrokeshire coast, he explores the part seabirds have played in our history and what they continue to mean to Britain today.The Seafarers is the story of those travels: a love letter, written from the rocks and the edges, for the salt-stained, isolated and ever-changing lives of seabirds. This beguiling book reveals what it feels like to be immersed in a completely wild landscape, examining the allure of the remote in an over-crowded world.“The writing lures you in, making you feel that you too might benefit from venturing out in inclement weather, just on the off-chance of seeing something remarkable on the wing to lift your spirits” – The National"A beautifully illuminating portrait of lives lived largely on the wing and at sea . . . In this intimate guide to the wild beauty and complexity of seabirds, Stephen Rutt has written a powerful chronicle of resilience and fragility' -- Julian Hoffman, author of Irreplaceable and The Small Heart of Things“An evocative book … I could taste the salt on my lips and smell the perfume of storm petrels. The Seafarers is a pelagic poem about the birds that exist at the coastal edges of our islands and consciousness. The stories of these hardy birds entwine seamlessly with Stephen Rutt's personal journey to form a narrative as natural and flowing as the passage of shearwater along the face of Atlantic rollers” -- Jon Dunn, author of Orchid Summer“An arrestingly vivid turn of phrase… An accomplished debut from an exciting new voice in Nature writing.” -- The Countryman Magazine “5*… One of those great joys of a book … I look forward to reading the next book from this author, although I acknowledge that he has set his own bar very high” – Tonto Williams Electronic Scrapbook“Writes as beautifully about Shetland as he does about seabirds” – Sally Huband, raingeeseandselkies.blogspot.com

    The dos and don'ts of travelling and staying in Iceland. Five chapters with multiple tips in each one explain what is expected of you as a traveller - as well as some bonus tips on what you can do.

    Recent politics and logistics have established borders and jurisdictions which now seem permanent and impervious. The Faded Map looks beyond these to remember a land that was once quiet and green. It brings to vivid life the half-forgotten kings and kingdoms of two thousand years ago, of the time of the Romans, the Dark Ages and into the early medieval period. In this fascinating account, Alistair Moffat describes the landscape these men and women moved through and talks of a Celtic society which spoke to itself in Old Welsh, where the Sons of Prophesy ruled, and the time when the English kings of Bernicia held sway over vast swathes of what is now Scotland. Heroes rode out of the mists to challenge them and then join with them. The faint echo of the din of ancient battles can be heard as Alistair Moffat takes the reader on a remarkable journey around a lost Scotland.

    Should they follow cautionary guidelines to return to a major city or take a chance by continuing north through the back country?Thru-hiking from Georgia to Maine on any given year has its own enormous obstacles. What do you eat? Where do you sleep and can you reach your family? In 2020, during a worldwide shutdown these challenges became nearly impossible to overcome. See how rural trail town communities were affected by the pandemic and understand an untold perspective of pursuing your dreams at all costs.Avoiding law enforcement, entering into "closed" federal land and even overcoming death - all while attempting the impossible. With a wife and two daughters at home, the outside world against him and seemingly unreliable information, this epic tale follows Ryan Michael Beck's journey 2,193 miles in pursuit of a dream to thru-hike the entire Appalachian Trail against all odds.

    On the outer edge of the British Isles and facing the Atlantic Ocean, the Hebrides form part of Europe's boundary. Because of their unique position in the Atlantic archipelago, they have been at the centre of a network of ancient shipping routes which has led to a remarkable history of cultures colliding and merging. Home to a long and rich Gaelic tradition, for centuries their astonishing geography has attracted saints and sinners, and stimulated artists and writers, inspiring awe and dread as well as deep attachment. Over six years, Madeleine Bunting travelled north-west, returning again and again to the Hebrides, exploring their landscapes, histories and magnetic pull. With great sensitivity and perceptiveness, she delves into the meanings of home and belonging, which in these islands have been fraught with tragedy as well as tenacious resistance. The Hebrides hold a remarkable place in the imaginations of Scotland and England.Bunting considers the extent of the islands' influence beyond their shores, finding that their history of dispossession and migration has been central to the British imperial past. Perhaps more significant still is how their landscapes have been repeatedly used to imagine the British nation. Love of Country shows how their history is a backdrop for contemporary debates about the relationship between our nations, how Britain was created, and what Britain has meant - for good and for ill.

    Wrapping itself around the lower reaches of Finland, Sweden, and Norway, it crosses the tip of Greenland and the southern coast of Alaska, and slices the great expanses of Russia and Canada in half. The parallel also passes through Shetland, where Malachy Tallack has spent most of his life.In Sixty Degrees North, Tallack travels westward, exploring the landscapes of the parallel and the ways that people have interacted with those landscapes, highlighting themes of wildness and community, isolation and engagement, exile and memory.An intimate journey of the heart and mind, Sixty Degrees North begins with the author's loss of his father and his own troubled relationship with Shetland, and concludes with an embrace of the place he calls home.

    ("I had recently read," Bryson writes, "that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me.") But before departing, he set out on a grand farewell tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home.Veering from the ludicrous to the endearing and back again, Notes from a Small Island is a delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation that has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey. The result is an uproarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain, from the satiric pen of an unapologetic Anglophile.