Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2014
If you’re a fan of the Lonely Planet series of guides, you’ll enjoy this comprehensive reference guide to what might be the top travel trends, destinations and journeys for 2014. Even if they’re wrong, it’s full of ideas, fascinating facts and inspiring photography to make your feet start itching.
Gironimo! Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy
The author of French Revolutions recreates history’s most appalling bike race – the notorious 1914 Giro d’Italia, an ordeal of 400km stages through night storms and sabotage, all on a diet of raw eggs and red wine. Striving for authenticity, Moore rides it on a gearless, wooden-wheeled 1914 road bike. A treat.
Naked and Marooned
Ed Stafford
(Virgin Books, £20)
If you were abandoned on a tropical island with no food or water, no basic equipment, not even a knife, and no clothes – could you survive? For 60 days, with only his explorer’s instinct and a video camera, extreme adventurer Ed Stafford confronts blazing heat and brutal loneliness to survive. Exhausting but impressive.
Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West
Peter Hessler
(Harper Perennial, £7.96)
Strange Stones is a collection of New Yorker correspondent Peter Hessler’s shrewd and humorous insights from over decade of living and reporting in both the US and Asia. Hessler’s storytelling ranges from topics as wide as a taste test between rat restaurants in South China and a profile of Chinese basketball star Yao Ming.
Pro Cycling on $10 a day
Microadventures
Alastair Humphries
(William Collins, £11.89)
In this glossy, beautifully photographed book, adventurer Alastair Humphries expounds the philosophy of microadventures. Close to home, cheap, simple, and short, a microadventure takes the spirit of a big outdoors adventure and squeezes it into a day or even a few hours. A night hike, a wild swim or overnight in the local woods... All the inspiration and know-how are here.
