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Britain and Ireland's Best Wild Places: 500 Ways to Discover the Wild
by: Christopher Somerville

List Price: £25.00

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780713999679
ISBN: 0713999675
Label: Allen Lane
Manufacturer: Allen Lane
Number Of Pages: 544
Publication Date: July 03, 2008
Publisher: Allen Lane
Studio: Allen Lane
Sales Rank: 756

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Editorial Review:

Robert Macfarlane, Sunday Times Book Review:
'The book is a success of organisation...an exemplary piece of book craft... The best guidebooks...inspire adventure, improvisation and the learning that comes from discovery. Somerville's book is in that valuable tradition.'

Sunday Telegraph:
`Christopher Somerville's magnificent gazetteer to Britain and Ireland's wild places could not be more timely'

Western Daily Press (West Country Life):
`Britain and Ireland's best Wild Places is a beautifully presented volume...deftly and lyrically described in a way that is sure to lure the romantic wanderer'

Colin Tudge, Financial Times:
At once informative and poetic ... those [places] I know of are gems. ... I've got a lot of books on wildlife and this is already among the select.

Synopsis:
Christopher Somerville takes us a journey of discovery through Britain and Ireland, spanning their length and breadth as he seeks out 500 of his favourite Wild Places in fields and green lanes, in forests and mountains and on lonely coasts, in all of nature's moods and every kind of weather. "Britain and Ireland's Best Wild Places" is the key to discovering Scottish mountainsides covered in rare Ice Age flowers, Cornish standing stones and holy wells, Midlands wildflower meadows, storm-battered Welsh headlands and seabird islands, hill ranges and boglands in Ireland where only hares and skylarks go. But this adventurous book roams far beyond conventional landscapes. Among its wild treasures are medieval Green Men spewing mouthfuls of leaves, the ruins of haunted chapels deep in forgotten woods, old mines and quarries being recaptured by nature, villages where pagan rituals are still enthusiastically observed, rusting sea-forts tottering on sandbanks.Each Wild Place is enhanced with mapping and travel instructions, suggestions about walks and other useful information. Britain and Ireland are crammed full of wild places, often astonishingly close to home.

Here is one man's poetical yet practical account of the state of the Wild in Britain and Ireland, how it is being both threatened and nurtured, and how - whether you are heading out for a Sunday stroll or planning your next holiday - you can go out and discover it in all its extraordinary vigour and variety.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Wild about the places
A culmination of many years of travelling the country, this is a fantastic collection of nooks, crannies and odd corners that have largely gone overlooked by the rest of us as we rush about our daily lives. A visit to any of these places would be time very well spent, but just curling up in a corner with it is a fine form of escape too if circumstances don't allow you to get away.

A perfect partner to 'Places to Hide' by Dixe Wills which similarly takes readers to the most unlikely of places and makes them laugh at the same time, which is quite a feat.

Anyway, I've no hesitation in awarding Somerville five stars for a great idea well executed.

Rating:

- How to take a walk on the wild side
As soon as I saw this book, I knew that it would appeal to me. At present there are a great number of similarly themed books, all encouraging the reader to relinquish their place from the sofa and instead to get out into the countryside and experience the places within the pages for themselves. BRITAIN AND IRELAND'S BEST WILD PLACES is perhaps one of the best ways of beginning to do exactly that.

The book is organised into regions, beginning with The West Country, moving upwards throughout Britain before fianlly moving across to Ireland.
Each wild place has details of mapping and travel instructions, plus other useful information. For example, in the Republic of Ireland Somerville details the Nephin Beg mountains. Stating ... Read More:

Rating:

- a great travelling companion
A lovely book - you feel compelled to read about places you have been to and driven to explore pastures new. A book to refer to on any trip to unfamiliar territory and a fabulous gift for anyone who likes to walk.

Rating:

- Best Wild Places- a splendid encyclopaedia of inspirational walks
This is a beautifully produced book which is not only clear and well- structured but informative and inspirational. You start by reading about places you have already visited and soon discover places you need to visit. The photography is real and the descriptions tempting. It is a perfect book to dip in and out of and suits experienced and novice walkers alike.

Rating:

- Beautifully produced and written - a completely new take on our most secret and eccentric places
If you love a wild or strange place then you should know about Christopher Somerville's new labour of love: a lyrical gazetteer to over 500 hidden and forgotten corners of the British Isles, each one a desolate, magical or inspirational place.

Christopher is one of Britain's most prolific travel writers. This guide and travelogue represents a synthesis of his life's adventures and treasured finds, whether the pagan May day eve chorus of Obby Osses in Padstow, the lost jungled underworld of the coastal undercliff in Dorset or the magical waterfall plunge pool of Cautley Spout in the Yorkshire Dales. Each is written with passion, history and anecdote and supported with grid references and directions.

There are also moody ... Read More:

Books : Britain and Ireland's Best Wild Places: 500 Ways to Discover the Wild