This guide to pub walks in the Lake District ranges from easy lowland ambles to hair-raising leaps across foaming upland torrents - all offering stunning views. There are details of the refreshments provided in each pub - from home-brew to regional and national favourites
'One of the best books I've read in the last five or ten years... Wild is angry, brave, sad, self-knowing, redemptive, raw, compelling, and brilliantly written, and I think it's destined to be loved by a lot of people, men and women, for a very long time.' Nick Hornby
Pub Walks in Underhill Country by Nat Segnit is a cunning, hilarious and heartbreaking novel that takes the form of a guide for walkers but is really a whole lot more . . . 'Start by turning right out of the main entrance of Malvern Link railway station . . .' So begins Graham Underhill's guide to rambling in the West Midlands. But it is not many yards before Graham has gone completely off track, all but abandoning the route ahead to exult in his love for his beautiful if headstrong wife Sunita. Along the way Graham treats us to his intemperate views on mountain bikers, litter louts, landscape photographers, and the Highways Agency, who are intent on building a bypass through his home. At least he has Sunita. Or does he? With each walk it becomes clearer that the paths of Underhill Country lead into treacherous terrain. 'If Vladimir Nabokov had written episodes of The Archers (with a little script advice from W G Sebald), then he might just have struck a note that chimed with the peculiar music of this beguiling first novel' Independent 'A metafictional escapade . . . has both Nabokov and Alan Partridge as its forebears' Daily Telegraph 'Has echoes of Mike Leigh's best films and Paul Torday's smash debut, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen' Daily Mail Nat Segnit lives in London. His journalism and stories have appeared in several national newspapers, and his play, Dolphin Therapy, and two co-written comedy series, Strangers on Trains and Beautiful Dreamers, were broadcast on Radio 4. Pub Walks in Underhill Country is his first novel.
Like many others, Nick Corble was confused. Unsure of where his country was going, he decided to get engaged rather than enraged. Using only public footpaths, Diagonal Walking traces a walk along a unique line cut at 45 degrees through the very centre of the county. Starting just north of Liverpool and ending on the south coast of Kent, Nick passed through affluence and austerity. Writing with disarming honesty, he chronicles what he discovered, not only about his fellow countrymen, but also about the state of the nation itself as it faced its greatest challenge for generations. Diagonal Walking is more than simply a long distance walk or another take on Brexit. Determined to reach out to listen to, and learn from, as many voices as possible, Nick planned to involve both the virtual and real world in his trek. As he donned his rucksack for the first time, what he couldn’t have foreseen was that the summer of 2018 would be marked by extremes of both weather and politics unseen for at least forty years. Funny and insightful, Diagonal Walking packs a punch, providing the reader with plenty of food for thought, and maybe even the incentive to do something similar.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Europe is renowned for romantic inn-to-inn vacation opportunities on paths worn by centuries of travelers. Modern-day trekkers can hike the Alps or Southern France, explore the British Isles at three miles an hour, or pilgrimage through Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, stopping each night at a hostel or inn. Now adventurers in California are creating a new tradition of multi-day treks from inn to inn in the U.S. Walkabout Northern California: Hiking Inn to Inndescribes twelve walks (or “walkabouts”) along the wild Pacific Coast, through the majestic Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Cascades and through the parklands around the San Francisco Bay. Each walkabout, organized by individual chapters, contains all the information to create a memorable and invigorating vacation, with a sketch map, recommendations for optional maps, mile-by-mile details of the route, and logistical tips on places to stay and eat. Many trips contain variations for different lengths of time and budgets. With a light daypack and a few reservations, hikers can travel for days on California's breathtaking coastline or in mountain ranges. Each day on a walkabout ends with a comfortable bed, a glass of wine, a good meal and maybe even a hot tub. Some of the hikes can take a week, but many can be enjoyed in a weekend. Some are challenging, but the majority are perfect for the casual hiker. The accommodations for the walkabouts include a B&B perched on the cliffs above the Pacific, a resort on the shore of a Sierra lake, a historic hotel in a coastal village, a hostel in a national park, and a retreat center that soothes the soul.
With its depiction of the downtrodden prostitutes, bootleggers, and hustlers of Perdido Street in the old French Quarter of 1930s New Orleans, "A Walk on the Wild Side" tells, in Algren's own words, "something about the natural toughness of women and men, in that order".
Known as the Dark Peak because of its dark peaty soils and weathered gritstone outcrops, the walks in this volume are based over an area stretching from Chapel-en-le-Frith in the south to Holmfirth in the north. The text features 30 rambles ranging from 3 to 11 miles.
The debut novel from the internationally acclaimed author of Wild weaves a searing and luminous tale of a family's grief after unexpected loss. • "A deeply honest novel of life after catastrophe, of intimacy lost and found." —O, The Oprah Magazine "Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!" is the advice Teresa Rae Wood shares with the listeners of her local radio show, Modern Pioneers, and the advice she strives to live by every day. She has fled a bad marriage and rebuilta life with her children, Claire and Joshua, and their caring stepfather, Bruce. Their love for each other binds them as a family through the daily struggles of making ends meet. But when they received unexpected news that Teresa, only 38, is dying of cancer, their lives all begin to unravel and drift apart. Strayed's intimate portraits of these fully human characters in a time of crisis show the varying truths of grief, forgiveness, and the beautiful terrors of learning how to keep living.
God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath—The Appalachian Trail. The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas. With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey. An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.