Full Description
The New Forest is hardly the sort of wild or remote place where you would expect to get lost, especially if you are an experienced traveller, but Douglas Botting managed it. 'There were no sounds of civilization to give us a bearing on the outside world, no distinguishable landmarks, just trees, and more trees, and clearings, thickets, groves, gullies leading nowhere in particular, and trees again.'
As he explains in this warm and lyrical book, it does not do to underestimate wild Britain. He makes a wonderful job of showing you around, taking you from the broad-leaf woodlands of southern England to the wind-lashed basalt and granite cliffs of the Outer Hebrides. Whether he is celebrating the rolling Yorkshire Dales of his childhood, where the lapwings cried and the bluebottles huzzahed in the cowpats, or engaging with the earth-shattering intricacies of plate tectonics, Douglas Botting is always readable and entertaining. The book also describes in detail where to go fishing, climbing, cycling, caving, riding, camping and even ballooning, and offers some unusual ideas for where to stay, including the time capsule of Kinloch Castle on the Isle of Rhum, intact in every detail down to the scoreboard of its Edwardian billiard room.
Contents
About the series. Wild Britain: An Introduction - Map of Britain showing Chapter Areas. The Key to Britain's Wild Places - The Shape of the Wild, Protected Wild Places, The Rules of the Wild, To the Reader. Chapter 1: The West Country - Dartmoor, Exmoor, The Two Moors Way and Bodmin Moor, The Mendip Hills and The Somerset Levels, The South West Coast Path (Somerset, North Devon and Cornwall Coast Paths), The Isles of Scilly, The South West Coast Path (South Devon and Dorset Coast Paths). Chapter 2: South and Central England - The New Forest, The Shropshire Hills, The East Coast, The Norfolk Broads, The Fens, Breckland. Chapter 3: North-West England - The Peak District, The Yorkshire Dales, The North Pennines, The Lake District, The North-West Coast, The Pennine Way. Chapter 4: North-East England - North York Moors, Northumberland, Northumberland Coast. Chapter 5: Wales - Pembrokeshire, South Wales, Brecon Beacons, Central Wales, North Wales, Snowdonia, Offa's Dyke Path. Chapter 6 Lowland Scotland - The Solway Coast, The East Coast, The Southern Uplands, The Southern Uplands Way. Chapter 7: The Scottish Highlands and Islands - The Southern Highlands, The Central Highlands, The Cairngorms and East Grampians, The North-West Highlands, Knoydart, Wester Ross, North-West Sutherland, The West Highland Way, Scotland: The Islands, The Inner Hebrides, Rum, Skye, The Outer Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland, The Outliers. Glossary. Useful Addresses. Index.
