As you turn these pages, you will find yourself transported to a world of vivid landscapes, quirky anecdotes, and encounters with eccentric characters. Praised for its vivid imagery and dry wit, you will laugh, you will marvel, and perhaps, you will see a bit of your own journey reflected in this story. The people we meet and the places we go shape us in ways we often don’t realise. For in the end,this bookis not just one man’s story, it is a celebration of the human spirit, a testament to...

This book is an Aladdin's cave of treasure for the reader who enjoys writing that engages the senses as well as one's appreciation of great writing. The author's humour and wit are dry and subtle. Each sentence is a polished visual gem, drawing the reader into the events unfolding or the situation described. His style is succinct, the whole flows in a lyrical way, carrying the reader smoothly along on a never-ending river of images. For me, the imagery evoked in just a few sentences is som...

What would you do if you realised that you had finally become too fat to wear your dad's pants? Pete Hepworth got his bike out and hit the trails of New Zealand, promptly suffering the indignity of being overtaken by some Danish pensioners. Along the way he met the cast of the Lord of the Rings movie in a seedy tattoo parlour in Wellington and many small marsupials with poor road sense.

Michael Palin's terrific account of his journey through 18 countries bordering the Pacific Ocean, published by Phoenix for the first time.For almost a year, Michael Palin travelled through 18 countries on the perimeter of the world's largest ocean, in a spectacular journey of contrasts, drama and beauty.From head-hunters in Borneo to a meal of maggots in Mexico, his route takes him to some of the most politically volatile and physically demanding places on ...

After two months on board a Russian container ship sailing 15,000 miles across the world, Josie finally arrives in New Zealand with her bike. Over the next nine months she cycles 10,000 kilometres all over North and South Islands while experiencing the wettest, windiest and stormiest year on record. During this time Josie was spat at, shouted at, honked at, and both run off and blown off the road. She got soaked, sunburnt, hailed on and snowed on and was alternately starved and over-fed, o...

‘A powerful meditation on what it means to belong.’ The Times Literary Supplement ‘Deeply moving.’ David Lammy ‘Honest, poetic and deeply researched excellence.’ Paterson Joseph ‘It took two decades for me to go in search of the parts of myself I had left behind in the Caribbean. What ghosts were waiting for me there? There was a thick, black journal in my flat, stuffed with letters, postcards, handwritten notes and di...

Josie Dew's love of cycling has taken her across the world, travelling everywhere from Japan and Mexico to Iceland, India and Algeria. In her latest book, she sets off on another quirky and riotous ride, choosing to circumnavigate the coastline of the British Isles. And she discovers that her homeland can be as surprising and full of incident as anywhere she has ever been.Beginning in Portsmouth, Josie sets off in a clockwise direction after a Shetland grandmother warns her that she...

By most people's standards, Josie Dew is hugely adventurous. By American standards, she is completely insane. For Americans drive everywhere: through cinemas, restaurants, banks, even trees. But driving past Josie as she pedalled across America was a new and alarming experience.On her eight-month journey Josie experienced it all; race riots in Los Angeles, impossible heat in Death Valley, Sexual Tantric Seminars in Hawaii. From Utah to the Great Lakes, via improbable places like Zz...

'A modern Graham Greene' Sunday TimesRobert Grieve – pushing thirty and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher – decides to go missing.As he crosses the border from Thailand to Cambodia, he tests the threshold of a new future. And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events involving a bag of ‘jinxed’ money, a suave American, a corrupt policeman and a rich doctor’s daughter, in which Robert’s...

Not content with walking the Pennine Way as a modern day troubadour, an experience recounted in his bestseller and prize-wining Walking Home, the restless poet has followed up that journey with a walk of the same distance but through the very opposite terrain and direction far from home.In Walking Away Simon Armitage swaps the moorland uplands of the north for the coastal fringes of Britain's south west, once again giving readings every night, but this time throug...

As a young girl, Josie Dew developed an overpowering urge to travel. She also fell out of a fast-moving vehicle and, rather inconveniently, developed a lifelong aversion to cars. Along came her first bicycle, and she has never looked back. Four continents, thirty-six countries and eighty thousand miles worth of astounding adventures, eccentric characters, varied cultures and ever-enduring optimism are the result of her travels.From Saharan locust invasions to tree-climbing goats, an...

David Attenborough, Dion Leonard (Finding Gobi), Dervla Murphy and Brian Jackman are just four of the authors whose work features in this new anthology from Bradt focusing on true stories about travelling with animals. In Beastly Journeys, there are 46 tales of extraordinary animal travel experiences, from hilarious holidays with pets to journeys on which wild animals somehow came along for the ride, including: David Attenborough tries to get an armadillo through Paraguayan customs; advent...