Kathleen Jamie, award winning poet, has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In Findings she draws together these themes to describe travels like no other contemporary writer. Whether she is following the call of a peregrine in the hills above her home in Fife, sailing into a dark winter solstice on the Orkney islands, or pacing around the carcass of a whale on a rain-swept Hebridean beach, she creates a subtle and modern narrative, peculiarly alive to her connections and surroundings.

    This is Coyote's country--a landscape of the imagination, where nothing is as it appears.

    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. From remote glens deep in the Scottish Highlands, John D Burns brings a new volume of tales – some dramatic, some moving, some hilarious – from the isolated shelters mountain people call bothies. Travel with Burns to secret places hidden amongst the British mountains and share his passion for the wonderful wildness of our uplands. Meet the vivid cast of characters who play their games there, from climbers with more balls than sense to a young man who doesn’t have the slightest idea what he’s letting himself in for…

    Charming, funny, inspiring, an assertion of the native swimmer's right to roam, a celebration of the magic of water – this book will indeed make you want to strip off and leap in.Selected from the book Waterlog by Roger DeakinVINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series:Eating by Nigella LawsonLiberty by Virginia WoolfSummer by Laurie LeeDesire by Haruki Murakami

    Fields, farms, hills and hedgerows appear altered, the wildlife behaves differently, and over time the terrain itself is transformed.In Rain, Melissa Harrison explores our relationship with the weather as she follows the course of four rain showers, in four seasons, across Wicken Fen, Shropshire, the Darent Valley and Dartmoor.Blending these expeditions with reading, research, memory and imagination, she reveals how rain is not just an essential element of the world around us, but a key part of our own identity too.

    In this, his last book completed just before his death, Sigurd F. Olson guides readers through his wide-ranging memories of a lifetime dedicated to the preservation of the wilderness.

    

    Then he discovered the mountains. Making up for lost time, Bullock soon became one of Britain's best climbers, learning his trade in Scotland and Wales, before travelling from Pakistan to Peru.

    As the road bent and the outline of Buachaille Etive Mor slid into sight, I did what I always did, and always would. I felt for that flutter of awe and that indefinable, unmistakable quickening of the pulse.’In the late 18th century, mountains shifted from being universally reviled to becoming the most inspiring things on earth. Simply put, the monsters became muses – and an entire artistic movement was born. This movement became a love affair, the love affair became an obsession, and gradually but surely, obsession became lifestyle as mountains became stitched into the fabric of the British cultural tapestry.In his compelling new book, Simon Ingram explores how mountains became such a preoccupation for the modern western imagination, weaving his own adventures into a powerful narrative which provides a kind of experiential hit list for people who don’t have the time nor the will to climb a thousand mountains.For some of these mountains, the most amazing thing about them might be the journey they’ve taken to get here. Others, the tales of science, endeavour and art that have played out on their slopes. The mythology they’re drenched in. The history they’ve seen. The genius they’ve inspired. The danger that draws people to them. The life that clusters around them, human and otherwise. The extreme weather they conjure. The adventure they fuel. The way that some raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and trigger powerful, strange emotions. And moreover, what they’re like to be amidst, under, on – just what that indefinable quality is that the British mountains wield which takes possession of you so powerfully, and never goes away.Ingram takes us high into the rafters of Britain’s most forbidding, unflinching and unchanging wild places through all the seasons of the year – from the first blush of spring to the deepest, darkest bite of the mountain winter. From Beinn Dearg to Ben Nevis, he takes us on a journey spanning sixteen of Britain’s most evocative mountainous landscapes, and what they mean to us today.

    On one level it is a vivid and evocative account of a remarkable trek - never attempted before - on another it celebrates the uniqueness of the Highlands, the scenery and ecology of 'the last wilderness in Europe'. The challenge Mike Cawthorne set himself was to climb all 135 of Scotland's 1,000-metre peaks, which stretch in an unbroken chain through the heart of the Highlands, from Sutherland to the Eastern Cairngorms, down to Loch Lomond, and west to Glencoe. His route traversed the most spectacular landscape in Scotland, linking every portion of wilderness, and was completed in the midst of the harshest winter conditions imaginable. Acclaimed on its first publication in 2000, this edition contains an epilogue in which Mike Cawthorne reflects on his trek and wonders what has changed since he carried it out. He warns that 'wild land in Scotland has never been under greater threat'. Hell of a Journey is a reminder of what we could so easily lose forever.

    In "The Bedside Book of Beasts," Graeme Gibson gathers breathtaking works of art and literature that capture the power, grace, and inventiveness of both predators and their natural prey."The Bedside Book of Beasts" presents myths, fables, poetry, and excerpts from nature and travel writing, journals, sacred texts, and works of fiction. Within these pages we encounter big cats, bears, wolves, and the small but voracious praying mantis, as well as works that bring to life the experience of more vulnerable prey. Portraits of such legendary evil beasts as the Minotaur, Grendel, and the biblical Leviathan add to the depth and breadth of the collection. An impressive array of art, both traditional and contemporary, as well as scientific, religious, and mythological drawings, paintings, and woodcuts make this volume an utterly unique gift for the holidays or any occasion.A fascinating exploration of the chain of life, of survival and mortality, "The Bedside Book of Beasts" evokes a profound sense of the eternal connection between humans and the creatures they endeavor to tame.

    Combining the work of the some of the most insightful travellers of the past 2000 years with his own experience, Tristan Gooley demonstrates how it is possible to connect profoundly with the lands we travel through.

    When she loses her beloved grandmother, and becomes pregnant with her first child, she feels its pull even more intensely.In Salt On Your Tongue Charlotte explores what the sea means to us, and particularly what it has meant to women through the ages. This book is a walk on the beach with Turner, with Shakespeare, with the Romantic Poets and shanty-singers. It's an ode to our oceans - to the sailors who brave their treacherous waters, to the women who lost their loved ones to the waves, to the creatures that dwell in their depths, to beach trawlers, swimmers, seabirds and mermaids.In mesmerising prose, Charlotte Runcie shows how the sea has inspired, fascinated and terrified us, and how she herself fell in love with the deep blue. Navigating through ancient Greek myths, poetry, shipwrecks and Scottish folktales, Salt On Your Tongue is about how the wild untameable waves can help us understand what it means to be human.

    Lines in the Sand

    She sees the footprints of early humans fossilised in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man who, despite having lain in a peat bog since the start of the Bronze Age, seems to be about to wake from a dream...'This book is a wonder' Adam Nicolson, Spectator'A clairvoyant and poetic conversation with the past' Antony Gormley