Travel Writing
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First Overland: London–Singapore by Land Rover
Decades before Race Across the World, six friends made the epic journey from London to Singapore and back in two Land Rovers.
Why not? No-one had ever done it: one of the longest of all overland journeys, from the English Channel to Singapore. Several expeditions had tried. Some had reached the Persian deserts; a few, the Indian plains. But none had gone further: over the jungle-clad Assamese mountains, across northern Burma, to Thailand and Malaya. It was 1955. For the final 3,000 miles, it seemed, there were ‘too many rivers and too few roads’. But no-one really knew…
They were undergraduates with no money, no cars―no nothing, except cool audacity. They wheedled and cajoled, coaxing the BBC into supplying film for a possible series; ‘persuading’ Rover to lend them two factory-fresh off-road vehicles; sweet-talking a book publisher into offering an advance. By the time they set off, their eighty-plus sponsors ranged from whiskey distillers to collapsible bucket–makers. Seven months and 12,000 miles later, two weary, police-escorted Land Rovers rolled into Singapore to flash-bulbs and champagne. Here, their bestseller is republished, with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough. He had given them that film, after all.
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From £6.99 -
The Year I Lay My Head in Water: Swimming Scandinavia in Search of a Better Life
Laying your head in water is what you do when you’re having a bad day. The water is where you go when you need time to think. It’s where you go when you reach a crossroads in your life.
Living in Copenhagen had been a dream for Laura Hall and it was working out – until it wasn’t. She discovered that the trials of life will follow you anywhere, as she felt herself disintegrating into stress and burn out. She was unmoored and unsure of how to find her place in the world.
What followed was a year swimming the cold seas of Scandinavia in search of answers and meaning. She swam in iceberg-filled seas in Greenland, visited Viking spas in Iceland, and beaches and piers all over Norway, Denmark and Sweden. During this year of discovery, Laura met other people doing the same thing and swapped notes, discovering ways to use the water to strengthen a bond with nature and get back to a more human way of life.
A love letter to the sea and the people of Scandinavia, this book is also a clarion call for anybody stuck in a rut who needs to rekindle their lust for life. It’s time to reconnect with the natural world. It’s time to lay your head in the water.
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From £14.25£18.99
