by Cal Flyn
This is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place.
In Chernobyl, following the nuclear disaster, only a handful of people returned to their dangerously irradiated homes. On an uninhabited Scottish island, feral cattle live entirely wild. In Detroit, once America’s fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods.
This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world – and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.
By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone?
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Hike, Drive, Stayin' Alive!
by The Raven Brothers
Out of shape and unprepared, The
Raven Brothers return to the road in a collection of ten quests to travel to their dream destinations
against all odds! After two decades pioneering new routes across the globe, you would expect the
authors of 'Driving the Trans-Siberian' to be hotshot explorers, with a sixth sense and an ability to
survive in almost any situation. Think again! With virtually zero knowledge of the workings of the
internal combustion engine and very limited skills of wilderness survival, Simon and Chris struggle
into their hiking boots and power across three continents by river, tarmac and trail.
Venture to the top of Norway, cruise the
road to Damascus, hike the Camino trail into Spain’s Wild West, row the Ganges, explore Frida
Kahlo’s world in Mexico City, hangout with the dead in Sicily’s eerie catacombs, crawl deep inside
Bolivia’s notorious silver mine, seek lions in Gujarat, wellness in Berlin and journey into the Naga
Hills where tribal kings still rule.
Noted by Lonely Planet for their talent to portray an “accurate view of what to expect”, 'Hike,
Drive, Stayin’ Alive!' signals a return to the duo writing “buttock clenching” travel comedy with the
first in a series of candid stories of adventure by The Raven Brothers.
