Outdoor Books
British Travel
Britain is small enough to cross in a day and varied enough that writers keep finding something new in it. This shelf has two kinds of book. Guidebooks are for planning: whole-country guides, road-trip itineraries and regional guides to England, Scotland, Wales and the islands. Travel writing is for the journey itself, on foot, by train, by kayak or along roads most people have forgotten. Read the writing before you go, and take the guide with you.
Start here
If you are planning a trip
Whole-country guides for working out where to go, a road-trip book for when the route matters more than the sights, and a shorter guide for people with only a week.
If you would rather read your way round
Four classic journeys that between them cover most of the country: Johnson and Boswell in the Hebrides, Priestley's England of the 1930s, Theroux all the way round the coast, and Bryson's tour before he left for the States.
If you would rather go slowly
Britain at the pace of a branch line or a footpath: two books of railway journeys and two of walking, for people who suspect the getting there is the point.
Featured
The Frayed Atlantic Edge : A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to the Channel
A year spent kayaking the Atlantic coasts of Britain from Shetland to the Channel, by a historian who wanted to see the coast the way the people who lived on it did: slowly, and close to the water. It is as much a history of coastal communities as a travel book. It shared the Highland Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize.
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Explore
The same shelf, cut four ways. Each count is the number of books in this category carrying that tag, and that is exactly what you will land on.
The full shelf
All books in British Travel
137 books
