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Travel writing
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Climbing days
When Dorothy Pilley first began climbing in the 1910s, female mountaineers were seen as a dangerous liability, their achievements ignored, unrecorded or disbelieved. Undeterred, Dorothy proved herself on the vertiginous slopes of Wales, Scotland and the Lake District before tackling rock faces in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rockies, Mount Fuji and the Himalayas. Her tireless championing of fellow women climbers and her own trailblazing example helped establish female alpinists as serious mountaineers with impressive records on bravery, skill and endurance. First published in 1935, 'Climbing Days' tells a daredevil tale of adventure, near-death slips and rapturous achievement in high places, interleaved with moments highlighting the particular challenges of being a woman in a sport seen as the province of men.
£12.99
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Without ever reaching the summit
Paolo Cognetti marked his 40th birthday with a journey he had always wanted to make: to Dolpo, a remote Himalayan region where Nepal meets Tibet. He took with him two friends, a notebook, mules and guides, and a well-worn copy of 'The Snow Leopard'. Written in 1978, Matthiessen's classic was also turning forty, and Cognetti set out to walk in the footsteps of the great adventurer. 'Without Ever Reaching the Summit' combines travel journal, secular pilgrimage, literary homage and sublime mountain writing in a short book for readers of Macfarlane, Rebanks and Cognetti's own bestseller, 'The Eight Mountains'. An investigation into the author's physical limits, an ancient mountain culture, and the magnificence of nature, it is an awestruck love letter to one of the most spectacular places on earth.
£10.99
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Lochs and legends
**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**A Scotsman's guide to the extraordinary tapestry of the land, history, folklore and stories of his homeland.
£16.99
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Metropolitain
Andrew Martin has been described as 'the laureate of railways', having written many books with railway themes. But Andrew has always been obsessed with the Paris Metro, hence 'Metropolitain', an English history of the Metro for the general reader. 'Metropolitain' is as stylish as the Metro itself and laced with cultural references. Andrew explains why 'Last Tango in Paris' is a great Metro film, and what the Metro chase scene in the classic thriller, 'Le Samourai', says about Parisian culture. He describes how he came to appreciate the beauty of Guimard's sinuous green Metro entrances when he bought a lily of the valley and observed it flowering on his desk.
£10.99
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Walking the bones of Britain
The influence Britain's geology has had on our daily lives is profound. While we may be unaware of it, every aspect of our history has been affected by events that happened ten thousand, a million, or a thousand million years ago. In 'Walking the Bones of Britain', Christopher Somerville takes a journey of a thousand miles, beginning in the far north, at the three-billion-year-old rocks of the Isle of Lewis, formed when the world was still molten, and travelling south-eastwards to the furthest corner of Essex, where new land is being formed. Crossing bogs, scaling peaks and skirting quarry pits, he unearths the stories bound up in the layers of rock beneath our feet, and examines how they have influenced everything from how we farm to how we build our houses, from the Industrial Revolution to the current climate crisis.
£10.99
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The full English
A Sunday Times Book of the Week and Top 10 BestsellerA Waterstones Travel Book of the YearA Spectator Book of the Year
£10.99
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Fifty miles wide
Award-winning travel writer Julian Sayarer cycles through Israel and occupied Palestine - with a new introduction by the author.
£12.99
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Europe
A result of five decades of journeying, this work offers a portrait of Europe.
£12.99
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All the wide border
A Waterstones Travel Book of the Year 2023A funny, warm and timely meditation on identity and belonging, following the scenic route along the England-Wales border: Britain's deepest faultline.
£10.99
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Sherpa
Amid all the foreign adventurers that throng to Nepal to scale the world's highest peaks there exists a small tribe of mountain people at the foothills of Himalayas. Sherpa tells their story. It's the story of endeavour and survival at the roof of the world. The story dives into their culture and tells of their existence at the edge of life and death. It traces their story pre- and post-mountaineering revolution, their evolution as climbing crusaders with never previously published stories from the most notable and incredible Sherpas of the last 50 years. This is the story of the Sherpas.
£12.99
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Into thin air
Jon Krakauer's acclaimed account of a disastrous expedition on Mt Everest.
£10.99
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Sarn Helen
Sarn Helen - Helen's Causeway - is the old Roman Road that runs from the south of Wales to the north. As Tom walks the route, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, he describes the changing landscape around him and explores the political, cultural and mythical history of this country that has been so divided, by language and by geography. Running alongside this journey is the story of Tom's engagement with the issue of the climate crisis and its likely impact on the Welsh coastline.
£10.99
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Stone will answer
At the age of 26, Beatrice Searle crossed the North sea and walked 500 miles through Southern Norway on a medieval pilgrim path to Nidaros Cathedral, taking with her a 40-kilo stone from the West coast of Orkney. She had recently completed her masonry training at Lincoln Cathedral and become fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of Scandinavia, Northern Europe and the ancient Greco-Roman world; stones closely associated with travellers, saints and the inauguration of Kings. Following in their footsteps, her stone becomes a talisman of sorts, a bedrock of home on the move, and an offering to those she meets along the way.
£10.99
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Into the wild
What would possess a gifted young man recently graduated from college to literally walk away from his life?
£10.99
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Attention all shipping
Familiar though the sea areas are by name, few people give much thought to where they are or what they contain. Charlie Connelly wittily explores the places behind the voice on the radio, those mysterious regions whose names seem often to bear no relation to conventional geography.
£12.99
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Hidden valley
Paul Richardson fled the conventions of his bourgeois upbringing to become a peasant farmer in a village on the edge of Europe. Immersing himself in the rural culture of his remote Spanish community, he learned the traditional arts of animal husbandry and vegetable growing, wine-making and home distilling, and made bread from the rye he sowed on the stone-walled terraces of his 12-acre farm. In prose that shimmers with sensuality and wit, he charts his personal route-map along a road less travelled - from the city back to the land, and from insecurity to fulfilment. He pays tribute to the influences that have shaped his progress - from The Good Life to Henry David Thoreau, from the 1970s pioneers of self-sufficiency to his farming neighbours in the far-flung region of Extremadura. In Paul's hands off-grid living both becomes an act of rebellion and a form of personal growth.
£12.99
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Reading the glass
What's in a cloud? What separates a tropical storm from a winter blizzard? And what exactly is El Niño? Elliot Rappaport, a professional captain of traditional sailing ships, has spent three decades at sea, where understanding weather could be the difference between life and death. In 'Reading the Glass', he offers a sailor's-eye view of the moving parts of our atmosphere and unveils the larger patterns it holds: global winds, storms, air masses, jet streams, and the longer arc of our climate.
£12.99
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The conspiracy tourist
Conspiracy theories used to be fun, a bit of laugh. Did we really land on the moon? Was Paul McCartney cloned? Nowadays, however, in the aftermath of Donald Trump, a global pandemic and the ever-increasing influence of social media algorithms, they are part of the body politic and a massive cause of division and mistrust. In 'The Conspiracy Tourist' Dom Joly sets out on a global journey to find out what's going on. His travels see him meeting followers of QAnon, hunting for UFOs in Roswell, chasing Alex Jones of Info Wars around Austin, trying to prove that Finland exists and taking a flat-earther to the edge of the world. On the way Dom inevitably finds the funny and the quirky, but he also tries to understand what makes people so drawn to conspiracy theories. What if those he has long dismissed as crazed loonies actually have a point?
£22.00
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The Curtain and the Wall
A landmark journey along the full length of the old Iron Curtain - from the Arctic Circle to Turkey's eastern border - tracing the history of the Cold War and meeting the people who live with its legacy.
£10.99
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Türkiye
From Thracian borders with Bulgaria to a sparkling Aegean coast, Julian Sayarer cycles across Anatolian hills towards the Black Sea, Kurdish southeast and the Armenian frontiers. Whereas books on Türkiye - renamed on the eve of its first century - often root themselves in history, romanticism, religion or civilisational terms, Sayarer brings to life this living, breathing community of peoples and place at the meeting point of Asia, Africa and Europe; a mid-point not only of East and West, but of all the unfurled globe. The result is a love letter to a country and its neighbours, but one that gives a clear-eyed view of Türkiye and its place in a changing world.
£25.00
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High
The Himalaya meander through five very different countries, where the world religions of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are mixed with ancient shamanic religions. Countless languages and vastly different cultures live in the secluded mountain valleys. Modernity and tradition collide, while the great powers fight for influence. We have read about mountain climbers on their way up Mount Everest and about travellers on the spiritual quest for Buddhist monasteries. But how much do we know about the people living in the Himalaya? This book invites us into close encounters with the many peoples of the region, and at the same time takes us on a dizzying journey at altitude through incredible landscapes and dramatic, unknown world histories - all the way to the most volatile human conflicts of our times.
£14.99
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Map Addict
'My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said?'Mike Parker, presenter of Radio 4's On the Map, celebrates the richness of all things maps in this fantastic, critically-acclaimed read.
£10.99
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The slow traveller
The Slow Traveller is a stunning guide to slow travel filled with evocative naturescapes, practical travelling tips and inspirational photography.
£16.99
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A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
A classic of travel writing, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is Eric Newby's iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth.
£10.99
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