Wild Britain: A Traveller's Guide

The New Forest is hardly the sort of wild or remote place where you would expect to get lost, especially if you are an experienced traveler, but Douglas Botting managed it. "There were no sounds of civilization to give us a bearing on the outside world, no distinguishable landmarks, just trees, and more trees, and clearings, thickets, groves, gullies leading nowhere in particular, and trees again." As he explains in this warm and lyrical book, it does not do to underestimate wild Britain. He makes a wonderful job of showing you around, taking you from the broad-leaf woodlands of southern England to the wind-lashed basalt and granite cliffs of the Outer Hebrides. Whether he is celebrating the rolling Yorkshire Dales of his childhood, where the lapwings cried and the bluebottles huzzahed in the cowpats, or engaging with the earth-shattering intricacies of plate tectonics, Douglas Botting is always readable and entertaining. The book also describes in detail where to go fishing, climbing, cycling, caving, riding, camping, and even ballooning, and offers some unusual ideas for where to stay, including the time capsule of Kinloch Castle on the Isle of Rhum, intact in every detail down to the scoreboard of its Edwardian billiard room. This edition of Wild Britain is published in association with Friends of the Earth, and has been thoroughly revised with their help. The entire text has been reset. All names and addresses have been brought up to date, and e-mail addresses and web-site details added. Sustrans cycle routes have been incorporated wherever appropriate, along with other improvements.

Douglas Botting is co-founder and General Editor of the Wild Guides series. He has traveled on numerous scientific and filming expeditions to wildernesses around the world and has circumnavigated the 6,000-mile coast of the British mainland twice on assignment for the BBC and the Times. He has won acclaim for his recent biography of Gerald Durrell, the conservationist and author of My Family and Other Animals.