If you are looking for inspiration for new walks to go on in 2025, the new, thoroughly updated second edition of Bradt’s Freedom Pass London brings to life the UK capital through 25 carefully curated walks that reveal historical landmarks, wildlife hotspots and quiet corners with fascinating pasts. As the title suggests, this travel guidebook is designed for the 1 million people who can enjoy free travel in central and Greater London thanks to the Freedom Pass, but its focus on walking destinations accessible by public transport makes it a must for anyone living in or visiting London.
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Our Favourite Games and Puzzles
Do you clear the table after Christmas dinner and lay out a board game? Do you spend a large chunk of Boxing Day doing a puzzle? Perhaps you just want to update your board game and puzzle collection. Either way, games and puzzles aren’t just for festive times, we’ve chosen some games and puzzles for children and adults that you might like to give as a gift or keep for yourself for fun all year round. Also, because it’s us, there is a strong geographical theme running throughout most of our selection:
£33.99
A global location guessing game in which opponents race to be the first player to travel around the world by locating famous places on the double sided world map board.
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Life on board an ocean liner in the early 20th Century
Judith Eagle, author of Children’s Book of the Month, The Accidental Stowaway, describes what life was like on board an ocean liner at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
In The Accidental Stowaway, Patch stows away on RMS Glorious, a ship that is sailing from Liverpool to New York. RMS Glorious (or Glory, for short) is based on the steamships that went back and forth across the Atlantic in Edwardian times.
The transatlantic liners were nicknamed ‘floating palaces’ because they were so luxurious. They were fitted out to look like the grandest hotels in Europe, with electric elevators, restaurants, libraries, music rooms, and lounges. They were decorated in the latest styles; the menus were created by the most fashionable chefs; and some of them even had special ‘extras’ like newspapers printed at sea!
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Routemasters of the Universe By Harry Rosehill
The last Routemaster to ply a proper London bus route retired in 2005. But over 15 years later, this indestructible bus still pops up everywhere. It’s just that nowadays merely in London Routemasters are wedding buses, Ghost Buses, afternoon tea buses, mobile yoghurt stalls on the South Bank… And elsewhere, all over the world, they have found new homes and been put to the most unlikely but serendipitous uses.
In Routemasters of the Universe Harry Rosehill catalogues all the possible uses of a Routemaster bus, from a tea room in Essex to a posh B&B in County Durham, a promotional bus for a theatre company in Moscow to an office in Bermuda, not to mention making history during the Iraq War as a Human Shield in Baghdad. Along the way he explains how Routemasters were built to last so long, why they’ve become so cherished, and where you get a spare big end for a 70-year-old commercial vehicle.
Here Harry Rosehill explains how he, a proud bus nerd, came to write this alternative history of a true London icon:
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