Outdoor Books

Now including the top astronomical places to visit, star festivals and the latest on star parties in Britain and Ireland, the new 2024 edition is totally up-to-date for exploring the wonder of the night skies, month-by-month and day-by-day. Whether you're a seasoned astronomer or just starting out, Philip's Stargazing 2024 is the only book you'll need. Compiled by experts and specially designed for easy and daily use, Stargazing 2024 acts as a handily illustrated and comprehensive companion. Includes 12 updated sky charts for year-round astronomical discovery, Month-to-Month information. Daily Moon Phase Calendar, highlighting special lunar events throughout the year and planet Watch for ideal viewing days in 2024. Find the best places to experience Dark Skies, along with the latest on Star Festivals and Star Parties and the top places to visit for astronomical insights. With expert advice and insight throughout from internationally renowned Prof Nigel Henbest, a special article on the use of filters for astro-photography by expert Robin Scagell, the complete calendar of major astronomical events, including the Top 20 Sky Sights of 2024 and Jargon Buster, explaining common or confusing terms, the planets' movements explained from solar and lunar eclipses to meteor showers and comets.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781849076517 • Author: Nigel Henbest • Publisher:  Philip's • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  96 • Dimensions: 14.9 x 14.9 x 21 cm

Meet Charlie and his four unlikely friends as they explore the world around them and reflect on everything they see and do… This worldwide bestseller is essentially a series of delightfully untamed sketches, each accompanied by a hand-written snippet of conversation. The comments are simple but life-changing through their wisdom, honesty, and authenticity – perfect for children and adults. Shared thousands of times online and recreated in school art classes, hung on hospital walls, and turned into tattoos, delve into the conversations of the boy, the mole, the fox and the horse. A magical story of love, compassion, friendship, kindness… and important life lessons. Product Information: • ISBN: 9781529105100 • Author: Charlie Mackesy • Publisher: Penguin Books • Format: Hardback • Pages: 128 • Dimensions: 22.5 x 17.5 x 2.5 cm

Your simple step-by-step guide to raising and training a happy puppy or dog! My name's Steve Mann and I've been a professional dog trainer and behaviourist for over 30 years. As founder of the Institute of Modern Dog Trainers, I've helped transform the lives of over 100,000 dogs and their families - and now I want to help you, too! Whether you're living with a brand-new puppy, an adult dog or a rescue dog, my methods will give you everything you need to know. Product Information: • ISBN: 9781788701600 • Author: Steve Mann • Publisher: Blink Publishing • Format: Paperback • Pages: 264 • Dimensions: 23.5 x 15.5 x 2 cm

All you need is love. And a plant. Whether you're a plant lover looking for seeds of inspiration, or a beginner hoping to cultivate your very own urban jungle, this little book is bursting with tips and ideas to help you hone your green fingers and become a true plant parent.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781787836877 • Author: Felicity Hart • Publisher:  Summersdale • Format:  Hardback • Pages:  144 • Dimensions: 11.1 x 1.9 x 15.5 cm   

Be inspired by creative ideas and practical advice on how to create your dream outdoor space! With the help of BBC Gardener's World presenter, Adam Frost, you can learn the small plantings, design flourishes, hands-on creative projects, and simple landscaping tricks to transform your garden. This book will show you how to use what you already have, with something to suit everyone's taste, space, and budget! Taking an artisan's approach and finding ideas from his own garden, each project starts with Adam's inspiration, walking the reader through the creative process with clear step-by-step photography and instructions. Unlike other gardening books, it's all about finding ideas in the most unlikely places and turning them into something truly personal.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9780241474464 • Author:  Adam Frost • Publisher:  DK • Format:  Hardback • Pages:  256 • Dimensions:  20.1 x 2.4 x 24 cm

Birdwatching is among the most popular hobbies in Britain, and one that can be done on your doorstep. RSPB Pocket Garden Birdwatch contains expert advice on how to provide water, food, and nesting sites to create a bird-friendly environment. It also reveals essential tips on observing birds, including the basic equipment needed. The indispensable book profiles the top 40 British garden birds, each illustrated with in-situ photography to make identification easy. Practical projects include making and siting a nest box, and how to design a bird-friendly garden, including choosing plants to attract particular species. The book also gives information about seasonal changes in bird behaviour, and a helpful size-comparison gallery for the species profiled in the book makes identification easy. Product Information: ISBN: 9780241412718 Author: Mark Ward Publisher: DK Format: Paperback Pages: 128 Dimensions: 19.1 x 10.1 x 0.9cm

Welcome back to Clarkson's Farm. At the end of Jeremy's first year in the tractor's driving seat, Diddly Squat farm rewarded him with a profit of just £144. So, while he's the first to admit that he's still only a 'trainee farmer'*, there is clearly still work to be done. Because while he's mastered the art of moaning about nearly everything, some of the other attributes required of a successful farmer prove more of a challenge. Did you know that loading a grain trailer was more demanding than flying an Apache gunship? Or that cows were more dangerous than motor-racing? Or whether would have been easier to get planning permission to build a nuclear power station than to turn an old barn into a farm restaurant? But if the council planning department and the local red trouser brigade seem determined to frustrate his schemes at every turn, at least he's got Lisa, Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald, his dry-stone-walling Head of Security to see him through.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9780241695791 • Author:  Jeremy Clarkson • Publisher:  Michael Joseph • Format:  Hardback • Pages:  240 • Dimensions:  15.24 x 1.3 x 23.5 cm

Experience the world by train alongside best-selling travel writer Tom Chesshyre, as he takes a whistle-stop tour around the globe in 49 unique journeys... Why do people love trains so much? Tom Chesshyre is on a mission to find the answer by experiencing the world through train travel – on both epic and everyday rail routes, aboard every type of ride, from steam locomotives to bullet trains, meeting a cast of memorable characters who share a passion for train travel. Join him on the rails and off the beaten track as he embarks on an exhilarating whistle-stop tour around the globe, on journeys on celebrated trains and railways including: India’s famed toy train, Sri Lanka’s Reunification Express, The Indian Pacific across the Australian outback, The Shanghai maglev, And the picturesque rail journeys of the Scottish Highlands. Plus trains through Kosovo, North Macedonia, Turkey, Iran, Finland, Russia, America and France, with short interludes in North Korea, Italy, Poland, Peru, Switzerland, England and Lithuania. All aboard!  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781849538268 • Author:  Tom Chesshyre  • Publisher:  Sumersdale • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  320 • Dimensions: 13.34 x 2.54 x 19.69 cm

What does it take to survive in the unknown? Explorer and survival expert, Ed Stafford captures the spirit of adventure in 25 of the greatest expeditions of all time. From 1864-2018, intrepid explorers blazed a trail with round-the-world records, the ascent of Everest, crossing the Australian desert by camel and kayaking the North Atlantic Ocean. They conquered mountains, deserts, jungles and seas venturing into the most remote and inhospitable climes on the planet. Peeking inside each kit bag (including his own), Ed Stafford reveals how the great explorers achieved their awe-inspiring missions to find out more about our world, and how the equipment they carried with them determined the success or failure of their expedition. Ed Stafford is a British explorer and the face of survival on the Discovery Channel. He holds the Guinness World Record for being the first person ever to walk the length of the Amazon River.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9780711259645 • Author: Ed Stafford • Publisher:  Aurum • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  262 • Dimensions:  12.8 x 0.3 x 19.8 cm

Another year on the Diddly Squat Farm and Jeremy is still knee-deep in mud and endless challenges. Welcome back to Clarkson's Farm. Since taking the wheel three years ago Jeremy's had his work cut out. And it's now clear from hard-won experience that, when it comes to farming, there's only one golden rule: Whatever you hope will happen, won't. Enthusiastic schemes to diversify have met with stubborn opposition from the red trouser brigade, defeat at the hands of Council Planning department, and predictable derision from Kaleb - although, to be fair, even Lisa had doubts about Jeremy's brilliant plan to build a business empire founded on rewilding and nettle soup. And only Cheerful Charlie is still smiling about the stifling amount of red tape that's incoming... But he charges by the hour. Then there are the animals: the sheep are gone; the cows have been joined by a rented bull called Break-Heart Maestro;. the pigs are making piglets; and the goats have turned out to be psychopaths. But despite the naysayers and (sometimes self-inflicted) setbacks, Jeremy remains irrepressibly optimistic about life at Diddly Squat. Because It's hard not to be when you get to harvest blackberries with a vacuum cleaner. And, after all, it shouldn't just be Break-heart Maestro who gets to enjoy a happy ending...  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9780241674895 • Author:  Jeremy Clarkson • Publisher:  Michael Joseph • Format:  Hardback • Pages:  192 • Dimensions: 15.2 x 2.6 x 23.6 cm

The Old Ways is the stunning fourth book by acclaimed nature writer Robert Macfarlane.  Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize 2012 Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes crisscrossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9780241982211 • Author:  Robert Macfarlane  • Publisher:  Penguin • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  448 • Dimensions:  19.7 x 12.8 x 2.7 cm

Jeremy Clarkson shares his opinions on just about everything in The World According to Clarkson. Jeremy Clarkson has seen rather more of the world than most. He has, as they say, been around a bit. And as a result, he's got one or two things to tell us about how it all works; and being Jeremy Clarkson he's not about to voice them quietly, humbly and without great dollops of humour. Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781405965170 • Author:  Jeremy Clarkson • Publisher:  Penguin • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  327 • Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.12 cm

Changing the narrative of mountaineering books, Sherpa focuses on the people who live and work on the roof of the world. Amid all the foreign adventurers that throng to Nepal to scale the world's highest peaks there exists a small community of mountain people at the foothills of Himalayas. Sherpa tells their story. It's the story of endeavour and survival at the roof of the world. It dives into their culture and tells of their existence at the edge of life and death.  Written by Ankit Babu Adhikari - a writer, social science researcher and musician - and Pradeep Bashyal - a journalist with the BBC based in Nepal - Sherpa traces their story pre- and post-mountaineering revolution, their evolution as climbing crusaders with previously unpublished stories from the most notable and incredible Sherpas of the last 50 years. This is the story of the Sherpas...  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781788403344 • Author: Ankit Babu Adhikari & Pradeep Bashyal  • Publisher:  Cassell • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  336 • Dimensions:  12.4 x 2.8 x 19.6 cm