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Finland as a hiking destination
Finland as a hiking destination I believe every country in the world offers great opportunities for hiking. The nature, climate, and also hiking culture varies from one country to the…
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Coed Felenrhyd
My first visit to the temperate rainforest of Coed Felenrhyd in North Wales was in early autumn. Entering the ancient site was to walk into a cathedral, a multi-layered, multi-faceted…
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An Open Door: New Travel Writing for a Precarious Century Edited by Steven Lovatt
I hardly know Wales at all. There was that one of our irregular summer childhood holidays when we exchanged the constant drizzle of Frinton for the interminable downpours of Aberdaron…
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Antarctic Pioneer The Trailblazing Life of Jackie Ronne by Joanna Kafarowski
Jackie Ronne reclaims her rightful place in polar history as the first American woman in Antarctica. The aim of this book is clearly to set the record straight and to…
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Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia by Shafik Meghji
An almost certainly apocryphal story about Queen Victoria’s defacement of a map of South America which gives the superb Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia its title. According to the legend…
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Shalimar: A Story of Place & Migration by Davina Quinlivan
I wasn't sure what to expect with Shalimar: A Story of Place & Migration, the wonderful debut novel from author Davina Quinlivan. I've read a fair bit on areas such as…
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The Best British Travel Writing of the 21st Century
The Best British Travel Writing of the 21st Century delivers what it promises and more. Like so many other recent publications it has its genesis in the Covid crisis. At…
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A Winter Walk Around St Ives
My eyes lighted on something dark, in the distance, on the beach. Coming closer, I saw it was a dead porpoise. Mouth frozen in a smile, skin radiating a silvery…
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Deliverance
For days there had been no signs of human life. Pine forests shrouded in snow and half-frozen lakes glittering in the sun stretched into an unspoilt Canadian wilderness. It was…
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I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain
Anita Sethi begins her book I Belong Here with an account of racial abuse. Travelling on the TransPennine Express train, a man insults her, saying, amongst other things too vile…