All Episodes
A Single Map - the Final Episode
Thank you for all your support this year!I hope you'll get out and explore your own map too...For more ideas and info: www.alastairhumphreys.com/localI am proud to kno...
Parakeets
I cycled to a small town that I knew as a motorway junction and a monstrous snarl of a roundabout. And yet I was riding towards it down pretty lanes fringed with red a...
Mushrooms
I began today’s grid square outside the Duke of Wellington pub, which dated from 1516, two and a half centuries before Old Nosey was born. I thought about all the braw...
Legacy
It was a morning of fresh sunshine and a chilly breeze, that day defined in The Meaning of Liff as ‘Brithdir – The first day of the winter on which your breath condens...
Conkers
As autumn approached, I was particularly looking forward to find- ing conkers. Horse chestnut trees and their appealing, polished seeds are a surefire declaration of t...
Rewilding the Valley
An episode on rewilding.Walking always feels very different from the running and cycling I usually do for exercise. I’m generally too impatient to walk somewhere if I ...
Bees
A long row of black poplar trees escorted my road towards the low horizon. I passed a row of small industrial units, then a house offering rosy windfall apples and pea...
Slow
Though the silver birch trees were turning to autumnal gold, sum- mer was back this week with a fury, despite me writing it off, but it was probably too early to speak...
Blackberries
Today’s grid square was a rare outing to the far side of the river, to the very edge of the map itself. It felt like a new country. Over that next hill lay lands unkno...
Thistles
The gate’s clang startled a buzzard who lumbered off the ground and flew into the sanctuary of the trees. I stood still in the field, feeling myself beginning to slow ...
Access
A good old chunter about access rights, the right to roam, and Scandinavia's approach to allemansrätten.My hopes were high. It was a perfect sunny day and the grid squ...
Swimming
I cycled to today’s grid square with Test Match Special playing in my headphones. Listening to the ebb and flow of a cricket match arcing towards its conclusion is one...
Daybreak
It seemed to me, walking and cycling through this year on my map, that the seasons move in two ways: gradually, then suddenly. No change, no change, no change... and t...
Streets
I had waited for the rain showers to pass before heading out today, but I was forced to shelter from a fresh cloudburst beneath a bowed old horse chestnut tree. Sheets...
Polytunnels
I filled my bottles with ice before heading out this morning. It was the hottest day of the year, and Britain was parched by an unusually severe drought. As I got read...
Viewpoints
Includes a polite argument about land access and the right to roam.I sat down on an overgrown, underused bench outside a derelict timber-framed pub to squeeze out my s...
Lakes
There was a humid, jungle feel to the day after heavy overnight rain. Plants shone, the ground steamed, a thrush sang a persistent tune that wouldn’t have sounded out ...
Ferry
To reach today’s square, I needed to make a short crossing on a small ferry, which I knew would be fun but also added the tiniest frac- tion of hassle to proceedings, ...
Butterflies
I removed my bike helmet and wiped my sweaty face. It was hot. I was at a memorial to a pilot shot down by German Messerschmitts in the skies overhead during the Secon...
Connections
A bonus round. A little something extra. Have a look at what you could have won... I didn’t go out today to explore a grid square as usual, but to see the squares betw...
Hovering
This kingdom of mine might cover only twenty kilometres squared, but it seemed at times to span a thousand worlds. From winter to sum- mer, welcoming smiles to grumpy ...
Jaded
Each week I arrived in my grid square with little idea what might capture my interest, but an increased certainty that something would. As with all good exploration, t...
Solstice
I sheltered beneath a large field maple tree, reframing my atti- tude to rain. Parking the grumbles and persuading myself instead how gleaming clean all the trees look...
Meadows
I had a free morning and my latest grid square lay before me, begin- ning with the rare pleasure of a segregated cycle lane, safe from the busy road that sliced the sq...
Eclipse
The map promised waterfalls. I was not expecting the 979 metres of Venezuela’s Angel Falls (named after the American explorer and pilot Jimmy Angel, whose plane crashe...
Flow
I dug out a pair of shorts to welcome in June. My legs shone ala- baster white, brighter than the day’s glorious sun. The lightness I felt inside made me aware of how ...
Swifts
I found an elevated spot where I could peep through the fence and look down on the new town being built across this blank grid square. Yet my map has never been blank....
Buttercups
You should sit in nature for twenty minutes every day, they say, unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour. I sat for a while on the bench on a small, tr...