The book is an account of a journey using local service buses from Lands End in the deepest south west of England up to John OGroats in the far north east of Scotland. With the issue of free bus passes to all British citizens over the age of sixty, the author decided to maximise the use of his in undertaking this 1,230 mile trip. By way of being different, the author decided to take with him, his dog Archie, a Jack Russell / cairn terrier cross, as he too enjoys travelling. The book is not...

Peace and tranquillity. For once nothing terrible is happening. After years of dodgy moorings, ankle-deep mud, exploding toilets and all the other normalities of live-aboard life, the Brownes now seem to have found the perfect spot in which to park Minerva, their aging narrowboat. Marie and family finally find the time to work on the outside of the boat and even take a holiday or two. It looks as though life has finally taken a turn toward 'normal'.Not a chance.From the bal...

"An insightful and often funny depiction of Italian Life" Hannah McIntyre, The Italian Insider MagazineIn this, the follow up to his successful debut book, 'An Italian Home', artist Paul Wright describes Italian village life and his regular dialogue with a group of retired men who are mostly from the catering trade. Punctuated with work adventures beyond the village boundaries for all manner of clients, both reputable and not so reputable in the surrounding area and beyond, to the ...

Michael Williams has spent the past year travelling along the fascinating rail byways of Britain for this new collection of journeys. Here is the 'train to the end of the world' running for more than four splendid hours through lake, loch and moorland from Inverness to Wick, the most northerly town in Britain. He discovers a perfect country branch line in London's commuterland, and travels on one of the slowest services in the land along the shores of the lovely Dovey estuary to the far we...

CAMPERVAN CAPERSA Couple's First YearExploring the World of CampervanningWhat do you do when you've got itchy feet but don't want to uproot your life?Buy a campervan!At least, that's what this couple did.After a rather nomadic life, the author settles down with her partner in Cornwall, England. But, after a number of years, those itchy, old feet want to get on the move again.On a restless whim, the couple decide to buy a campervan. It tur...

We were aware of a dreamlike quality to our trip. There was something far-fetched about it, something out of this world.Austerity might be getting everyone else down, but Steve is waving his worries goodbye on another of his light-hearted trips around the picturesque English waterways.This time it’s a bit different, though. This time he’s not just cruising with his cat, Kit, but with his long-suffering wife, Em, who’s given up work and wants her share of easy living too. The...

Keith’s wife Gail is looking forward to travelling the world and staying in comfortable hotels when Keith takes early retirement from his high-pressure job. But he has a shock in store for her. He unexpectedly decides to buy a huge American Winnebago-type motorhome (RV), tow a car behind ‘so they can bugger off for months on end around Europe’. Their only experience a brief episode 30 years earlier, when their VW pop-top blew up on a remote mountain road. Gail reveals her fear that anythin...

"Oh, you live on a boat? That must be really cold in the winter. . ." Or, "Oh, you live on a boat? It must be great being so close to nature . . ." Or, "Oh, you live on a boat? It must be fantastic to be able to go wherever you like, whenever you like . . ."Narrow Escape sets out to dispel these commonly held public myths.From how to avoid assassination by ninja stealth ducklings, through definitive proof that kittens are aliens and the best way to sleep at forty-five degre...

Chris tells of her years as a district nurse, first in London in the early sixties and then New Zealand in the late seventies. She tells of the rough living conditions in London, where we meet people like the solo mother dying of cancer and longing to give her children a good Christmas and the 90 year old blind lady who refuses a proposal of marriage. In New Zealand she has a large area, is on 24hour call as the only nurse and where most of the roads are not tar-seal. We meet the disfuncti...

Spring 1993. 14 months earlier the USSR had collapsed and with Russia accessible once more Gregory Yeoman and his expedition companions set off on their bicycles to ride from the Baltic to the Pacific. Over 153 days they encountered wild landscapes, wild people, crumbling hotels and Siberia's two cheeses on an extraordinary adventure through a nation finding itself after 70 years of Communism.'Riding into the Sunrise' is the story of the first cycling expedition to cross the new po...

Cycling the End to End is so much more than just sitting on something no bigger than, and as hard as, the sole plate of an iron and pedalling, as Julia was to discover. Every experience seemed to be about extremes: Cornish hills, Cheshire plains, busy Devon lanes, empty highland roads, downpours, droughts, smooth cycle tracks, hazardous cattle grids, psychedelic B&Bs and homely hostels. And when the terrain and the weather weren’t against her the wildlife was: terrorising Labradors, format...

Narrow Margins – a laugh-out-loud book which proves that lean times can sometimes be a very positive thing.Faced with the loss of everything following the collapse of the Rover Group, Marie Browne moved her long-suffering husband Geoff, chaotic children and smelly, narcoleptic dog on to a houseboat in search of a less stressful, healthier, alternative way of life.Strapped for cash, the family buy a decrepit 70ft barge called Happy Go lucky which had been run as a floating h...