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Find out moreFeeling the desire to explore closer to home or travel to far flung places? We have a selection of titles to satisfy your wanderlust. Whether you’re planning a great adventure or reading about your favourite parts of the world, have a browse of our Travel selection.
With fascinating features on everything from yaks and the yeti to World Heritage Sites, this 300+ page book offers excellent insight into all Nepal has to offer both intrepid explorers and culture-minded travellers. The in-depth regional coverage is extensive, providing insider guidance around Kathmandu, Patan, the road to Tibet, the Everest region, and more, including the remote west. Throughout, the photography is absolutely stunning, with fabulous images of evocative street scenes and awe-inspiring natural landscapes. And, if you’re planning to climb Everest or to embark on similarly adventurous exploits, the free eBook provides the same invaluable content digitally, so you can leave the print book back at base camp! Included in the guide is a free app with travel tips and practical information which is regularly updated - find out more. Further Reading Recommendations: Mountains Painted with Turmeric by Lil Bahadur Chettri Nothing to Declare by Rabi Thapa
This fabulous full-colour guidebook is perfect for short breaks in beautiful Bruges and Ghent. It covers the top attractions of both cities, including Gravensteen, Stadhuis and Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, and also has some really handy Perfect Day itinerary suggestions, which are invaluable for first-time visitors, especially when time is tight and you want to pack in as much as you can! Tech-savvy travellers wishing to travel light can download the free eBook and leave the book at home, though being such a handbag-friendly size, it’s really no hassle to carry around. As well as providing pertinent information about un-missable attractions, this also offers some insight into historical and cultural contexts, and suggests several great galleries and museums to pop into.
At once an invaluable planning tool and a provider of practical travel tips, this gorgeous book (it features full-colour photography throughout) will guide you through what might seem like a daunting range of options. The Top Attractions and Editor’s Choice chapters will help you focus on what you want to get from your trip, while the travel tips and maps provide practical support. Of special note are the detailed features on politics, cuisine, art and the area’s volcanoes. Places covered in detail include Manila, Luzob’s islands, Palawan, Mount Apo, and Zamboanga and the Sulu Islands. And, if you’re planning to travel around, the accompanying free eBook and app will come in very handy. Included in the guide is a free app with travel tips and practical information which is regularly updated - find out more. Further Reading Recommendations: Dusk: A Novel by F. Sionil José Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides
There’s no better way to explore beautiful Bath than on foot and this practical book makes the perfect companion for doing just that, with its richness of wonderful walking routes around the city and beyond. Tour One provides a superbly detailed route around Bath’s ancient centre, with welcome tips on places to stop off for well-earned breaks. Tour Two takes in the splendours of Georgian Bath and recommends visiting the Fashion Museum and the Museum of Asian Art as you meander Queen Square, the Circus, the Royal Crescent and Royal Victoria Park. There are ten inspired tours in total, each of them clearly-mapped and speckled with fascinating facts and local tips. But this isn’t solely limited to Bath itself – this conveniently compact guide also includes walking routes around Bristol, Wells and Glastonbury, Longleat and Stourhead, and the ancient sites of Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill.
This visually stunning guidebook is perfect for travellers who are planning an adventure around Central America. Covering the entire region (Southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama), it provides excellent overviews of the cultural and natural hotspots of each country, with inspirational features on the likes of local crafts, flora and fauna, and the region’s rich Mayan past. There’s also great coverage of the region’s cities (with easy-to-follow maps), so if you’re planning to explore the cosmopolitan urban hubs alongside going off the beaten track, this is an inspirational tool for your entire trip. Included in the guide is a free app with travel tips and practical information which is regularly updated - find out more. Further Reading Recommendations: The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux The Jaguar Smile A Nicaraguan Journey, by Salman Rushdie (non-fiction about Nicaragua)
A chance read magazine article found in a Dentist’s waiting room sets Nick Perry, his wife and 3 children off on a quest to find a home in Greece. They’d sold their Welsh farm and looked for a better way of life – and a better climate. They landed, rather by accident on Icaria, an island midway between Naxos and Samos and there began their adventure – and the need to find a living. I liked this travel adventure a great deal, the family aspect gives another dimension, their relative poverty gives it forward momentum and of course, there is beautiful Greece making this a very good read for a dull autumn day. ~ Sue Baker Like for Like Reading Extra Virgin: Among the Olive Groves of Liguria by Annie Hawes The Olive Farm by Carole Drinkwater
A lavishly illustrated account of human journeys with a foreword by Simon Reeve, from Ancient Persian couriers to the ascent of Everest, the invention of Concorde, and the voyage into space itself. Discover biographies of conquerors, explorers, and travellers, stories of scientific discovery and technological innovation, stunning works of art, and catalogues of travel-related memorabilia. This truly worldwide account is a glorious celebration of human journeys.
I could just write something like gorgeous or sumptuous and leave it at that but perhaps I should elaborate on this paen of praise showcasing the best Railway architecture in Britain. It’s not all high Victorian, the book also includes the new – and glad I am to see we have some new architecture worthy of inclusion. And not all has been saved – think of the Euston Arch for one but there is enough here to spur thoughts of instant visits and appreciation of such gems as Glasgow and the unusual Art Deco Leamington Spa. Good linking text as ever from Simon Jenkins and I’d praise the photographer(s) too if only their names were included. ~ Sue Baker Like for Like Reading London’s Historical Railway Stations Through Time by John Christopher Paul Atterbury’s Railway Collection by Paul Atterbury
When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enrol in the undergraduate seminar on the Odyssey that his son Daniel teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician's unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his `one last chance' to learn about the great literature he'd neglected in his youth - and, even more, a final opportunity to understand his son. But through the sometimes-uncomfortable months that follow, as the two men explore Homer's great work together - first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son's interpretations, and then during a surprise-filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus' legendary voyages - it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: for Jay's responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son to understand his difficult father at last. As this intricately woven memoir builds to its wrenching climax, Mendelsohn's narrative comes to echo The Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home.
If you’re heading to Oslo to soak up some seasonal Scandi atmosphere, then do yourself a favour and get yourself a copy of this compact guidebook before you go! It’s a clearly laid-out, quick reference tool that gets to the heart of the city’s top attractions, including the Viking Ship Museum, the Opera House, the Nobel Peace Center and fabulous Frogner Park. Of particular interest to winter travellers is the excellent coverage of Marka, the spectacular forested hills that surround the city. This guide tells you how to get there, and what to do when you reach this true winter wonderland, from walking and hiking, to cycling and skiing. If you have time to travel further even afield, you might also like to check out the Insight Pocket Guide to Norway.
Hugh Thomson's previous journeys have resulted in acclaimed books on Peru, Mexico and the Indian Himalaya, and more recently on southern England for the prize-winning The Green Road into the Trees. As he crosses the north, he combines his trademark wit and insight with a lyrical intensity about the history and the landscape; and it is his encounters with the people he meets along the way which bring that landscape to life in a manner few other contemporary travel writers attempt.
This practical pocket-sized guidebook is perfectfor discovering all York has to offer on foot, with eleven walking routes covering the historic heart of the city, must-see markets and museums, an excursion to the Yorkshire Coast, and an excursion to James Herriot country, to name a few. There’s also a steam train and dinosaur tour! Each is accompanied by a map and clear directions with key landmarks highlighted along the way, which makes it super simple to spot local gems. The eating out suggestions are excellent with a focus on restaurants and pubs serving delicious local dishes you can sample on your stroll stop-offs. In addition to these detailed walks, the book also offers excellent features on the North York Moors National Park, the local art scene and the area’s rich Roman and Viking history, alongside plenty of practical tips on how to get around.
We all love to travel. We all love escape. Granted, some are more adventurous than others, hankering to cross vast plains of unchartered territory, while the rest of us just want to find a nice hotel somewhere by a crystal blue sea. Whatever your level of wanderlust, there’s something here to inspire, inform and invade your senses. Follow in the footsteps of pioneers, heroes or trusted raconteurs; visit the real settings of favourite works of fiction (See our Reading on Location guide and read great novels set in the place you’re sitting in!); discover off the beaten track getaways; ponder the history of travel itself, laugh at anecdotes of the hapless. In short, by using our Book of the Month recommendations and taking a little stroll around the section, you can discover the world without leaving your fireside chair. Free your mind, they say, and the rest will follow.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” T.S. Elliot