Local

Alastair Humphreys

‘Agile, wryly funny and wise’ Robert Macfarlane

SHORTLISTED: Wainwright Prize

After years of cycling continents, rowing oceans and trekking across deserts and ice caps, adventurer Alastair Humphreys turns his attention to a single Ordnance Survey map around his own home.

Can this unassuming landscape marked by the glow of city lights and the hum of busy roads hold any surprises for the world traveller? Could a single map be enough exploration for a lifetime?

He finds peace and solitude in abandoned factories, discovers beauty on neglected marshland and encounters landowners frustrated by public footpaths crossing their land. Once he slows down enough to really observe his neighbourhood, Alastair realises that a landscape will never become completely familiar, no matter how long you live there.

Local is a celebration of nature and curiosity, and a call to arms to explore and protect the wild places on our doorsteps.

‘Alastair Humphreys shows us that space is deep as well as wide, and that one need travel only a few hundred yards to become an explorer of the undiscovered country of the nearby’ Robert Macfarlane

‘Alastair Humphreys is the consummate roamer: big of heart, curious of mind, light of step’ Amy-Jane Beer

‘A paean to the benefits of determined noticing. Humphreys’ omnivorous curiosity really shines through’ Financial Times

‘Genuinely thoughtful writing about planet, place and political purpose’ The Observer

‘A vivid, wry, angry, passionate read from Mr Adventure’ Saga Magazine

Paperback: 368pp

Published: Eye (January 2024)

ISBN: 9781785633676