Last night we hosted the launch of Family Adventures by Bex Band.
A practical guide to involving babies and children in all sorts of adventures, whether it be cycling, camping, paddling, hiking, swimming or outdoor holidays.
Last week we hosted the launch of Why We Travel by Ash Bhardwaj.
Why We Travel is a smart-thinking travel book, which uses travel as a window into human motivations. It explores what we can gain from venturing out into the world.
Continue reading Book Launch: Why We Travel by Ash Bhardwaj
Last week we hosted the launch of Running on Empty by Guy Deacon.
Continue reading Book Launch: Running on Empty by Guy Deacon
Did you know that the official calendar used in Nepal is the Bikram Sambat or Vikram Samvat calendar, which is 56 years and 8 months ahead of the western calendar. Each year begins on the first day of the month Baisakh, which usually falls on April 13th or 14th in the western calendar.
To convert a Nepali date to a Gregorian date:
Subtract – 56 Years – 8 Months – 17 Days. There are 12 months, but the number of days in each month changes each year and can go up to 32. This means there is no need for a leap year.
Visiting Nepal soon? Discover our full range of books, guides, maps, maritime charts in store or at Stanfords.co.uk.
We spend more on travel than on any other leisure activity. But Ash Bhardwaj believes that we can make travel more fulfilling by thinking about our motivations for doing it. He explores this in his book, Why We Travel, through a blend of travelogue, memoir, research, and advice.
Because of my work, people often ask me for travel recommendations. But as I wrote and researched Why We Travel, I realised that destinations are the wrong place to start our travel-plans, because different places suit different motivations at different times.
Continue reading Can we travel better?At the age of sixty, and having lived with Parkinson’s disease for over ten years, Guy Deacon CBE set out on one last adventure: to drive solo from his home in the UK 18,000 miles and through twenty-five countries to Cape Town on the southern tip of Africa. Running on Empty is the story of this incredible journey, across Europe and down the full length of Africa, took the former British Army officer over twelve months. Along the way, he broke down five times, underwent one emergency evacuation, and took 3,650 prescription pills.
There are only a handful of vehicles each year which attempt this difficult journey; many never complete it. Ongoing conflicts in Libya, South Sudan, Mozambique and many other countries make any journey exceptionally dangerous. In central Africa, road conditions, particularly in the rainy season, often make the going treacherous.
Further hazards include illegal checkpoints, extortion, contaminated fuel and a lack of services. Guy drove, lived and slept in his VW Transporter, often in remote spots, hundreds of miles from the nearest village or town. Reliant on patchy GPS, he often got lost.
His journey was, quite simply, an incredible feat by a man travelling alone with Stage 3 Parkinson’s disease, when simply putting on a pair of shoes can take half an hour. But not only did Guy’s journey fulfil a childhood dream to drive the length of Africa, his mission was also to raise global awareness of Parkinson’s disease, for which there is currently still no cure.
Here is an extract:
Continue reading Extract: Running on Empty by Guy DeaconFamily Adventures is a practical guide to involving babies and children in all sorts of adventures, whether it be cycling, camping, paddling, hiking, swimming or outdoor holidays.
As soon as Bex Band, founder of the UK’s largest women’s adventure community, Love Her Wild, announced she was pregnant with her first child, the sympathy began. ‘Enjoy your adventures while you can’, ‘It’s going to be a big shock not being able to travel as much’, and ‘Aren’t you going to miss adventuring?’It seemed as though having children was a death sentence when you’re an outdoor adventurer.
But it really doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, it’s a scary prospect – how do you keep them safe? Where do they sleep? What equipment do you need? – but it’s totally doable.
This guide is full of useful information (such as what to pack when camping with an infant or how to keep children safe in open water), invaluable tips (family games you can play around a campfire or how to keep morale up in bad weather) and plenty of honesty around things going wrong (poo-explosion on a wild camp, anyone?). Experiences from adventuring families also provide a plethora of insights so that you’re well equipped to make your family adventuring dreams a reality.
Here, Bex Band offers some tips for successful family adventures:
Adventuring with children is very different from when you are managing a trip with just adults. Packing, logistics, managing distances and food intake – it’s all different. It took us a while to get the balance right and to realise where the struggles would come from and what to let go of.
Continue reading Tips for Successful Family AdventuresWhen the celebrated critic and cultural historian Alexandra Harris returned to her childhood home of West Sussex, she realised that she barely knew the place at all.
As she probed beneath the surface, excavating layers of archival records and everyday objects – bringing a lifetime’s reading to bear on the place where she started – hundreds of unexpected stories and hypnotic voices emerged from the area’s past. Who has stood here, she asks; what did they see?
From the painter John Constable and the modernist writer Ford Madox Ford to the lost local women who left little trace, these electrifying encounters – spanning the Downs, Poland, Australia, Canada – inspired her to imagine lives that seemed distant, yet were deeply connected through their shared landscape.
By focusing on one small patch of England, Harris finds ‘a World in a Grain of Sand’ and opens vast new horizons.
Here is an extract:
Continue reading Extract: The Rising Down: Lives in a Sussex Landscape by Alexandra HarrisOur Children’s Book of the Month for April is The Royal Jewel Plot from award-winning author A.M. Howell.
Alice and Sonny investigate a stolen jewel, in this instalment of the bestselling Mysteries at Sea series.
Alice and Sonny are excited for their summer trip, sailing on the luxurious yacht the Lady Rose. They’re even more excited when they find out the King of England is going to be on board too.
Continue reading Children’s Book of the Month: The Royal Jewel Plot by A.M. HowellHappy National Walking Day. Today is the perfect day to plan your next walking adventure and we have some great products to help you on your way:
from £12.99
The Explorer series, Ordnance Survey’s most detailed maps recommended for anyone enjoying outdoor activities, provides topographic coverage of Great Britain at 1:25,000 on GPS compatible maps with hiking trails, cycling routes and extensive tourist information. Each printed map is available either on paper or as a waterproof and tear-resistant OS Active Map, as indicated in its title. Britain’s National Parks and other areas of particular tourist interest are presented on often double-sided OL (Outdoor Leisure) maps, whilst most standard format Explorers cover an area of 30 x 20km (approx. 19 x 12 miles).
Continue reading 10 Recommendations for National Walking Day
