It's not easy landing unprepared in a country like Japan. The eccentricities of the calendar, the indecipherable postal system, not to mention the alien alphabet, language and culture, have all to be confronted before the disorientated traveller can feel at ease. Trying to ride a bicycle through the streets of one of the most congested cities in the world would seem to compound your problems. For Josie Dew, however, with over 200,000 miles already clocked up in the saddle few things could be more challenging - or for the reader of A RIDE IN THE NEON SUN, more wonderfully entertaining. From Kawasaki to Kagoshima, Odawara to Okinawa, Josie discovered a nation rich in dazzling contrasts. The neon and concrete were there in greater abundance than even she had imagined, but so too were bottomless baths, love burgers, long-tailed cocks, musical toilet rolls, oriental Elvises, cardboard police and a sense of fun belying the population's rigourous work ethic. Far from being the reserved race that she had heard about, the Japanese welcomed her into their homes with bountiful smiles and bows - and skin-scorching baths.

Shows how to create a beautiful winter garden, detailing the extra care that must be taken and the measures for dealing with harsh weather and offering encyclopaedic coverage of winter plants

After two months on board a Russian container ship sailing 15,000 miles across the world, Josie finally arrives in New Zealand with her bike. Over the next nine months she cycles 10,000 kilometres all over North and South Islands while experiencing the wettest, windiest and stormiest year on record. During this time Josie was spat at, shouted at, honked at, and both run off and blown off the road. She got soaked, sunburnt, hailed on and snowed on and was alternately starved and over-fed, over-charged and under-charged. Then there was the wildlife: the possums (both dead and alive): exotic birds such as moreporks (with their eerie call) and fantails (who decided to follow); the ostriches, who liked to chase English cyclists and the harriers, who liked to dive bomb them; the more familiar but no less frustrating farm animals, who provided sheep-jams and cow-blocks to slow Josie down. In Long Cloud Ride, Josie brings New Zealand brilliantly to life. Warm, witty and acutely observed as ever, her latest adventure is sure to delight old and new fans alike.

Following on from the hugely enjoyable A RIDE IN THE NEON SUN, Josie takes us on the second part of her journey through Japan; a country whose keyword is peace, yet spends millions each year on high-tech armament. Josie's travels are as fascinating as they are varied; she endures a horrific storm at sea, samples the deadly puffer fish and visits the two cities which will forever symbolise the horror of war: Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But wherever she goes, no matter how remote or industrious the area, Josie encounters the friendly, quirky and unbelievably generous Japanese people, from those who load her down with cabbages and cans of Pocari Sweat to one couple who left her the key to their shop - and told her to sleep by the till!

A collection of anecdotes for each day of the year on the subject of travel and exploration from Charles Darwin, Michael Palin, Evelyn Waugh, and others. With an emphasis on the period 1750–1950—the classic era of both European exploration and diary-writing—this anthology features excerpts that convey men and women’s experiences of travel and discovery from the sixteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. The authors of the pieces range from famous explorers such as Captains Cook and Scott to modern travel writers journeying through the contemporary world, from people who pushed back the boundaries of geographical knowledge to people who wrote about what they did on their summer holidays. The book includes an introduction, explanatory notes and mini-biographies of all the contributors, including: Gertrude Bell (woman traveller in the Middle East) James Boswell (travels in Scotland and the Hebrides) William Cobbett (Rural Rides through England) Christopher Columbus (journals of his voyages to America) Charles Darwin (Voyage of the Beagle) Captain James Cook (voyages in the Pacific) Washington Irving (American writer travelled in Europe in first decades of nineteenth century) Edward Lear (landscape painter and nonsense writer produced journals of his travels in Greece, Corsica, Near East etc) Lewis & Clark (journals of famous journey of American exploration) William Morris (wrote a journal of a trip to Iceland in 1870s) Michael Palin (a Python abroad) Mungo Park (African explorer in early nineteenth century) Captain Robert Falcon Scott (doomed journey to South Pole) Evelyn Waugh (diaries of 1930s travels in Mediterranean and beyond) William John Wills (explorer of Australia)

Adventure is just a book away as bestselling author Nancy Pearl returns with recommended reading for more than 120 destinations — both worldly and imagined — around the globe. From Las Vegas to the Land of Oz, Naples to Nigeria, Philadelphia to Provence, Nancy Pearl guides readers to the very best fiction and nonfiction to read about each destination. Even within one country, she traverses decades to suggest titles that effortlessly capture the different eras that make up a region’s unique history. This enthusiastic literary globetrotting guide includes stops in Korea, Sweden, Afghanistan, Albania, Parma, Patagonia, Texas, and Timbuktu. Book Lust To Go connects the best fiction and nonfiction to particular destinations, whether your bags are packed or your armchair is calling. From fiction to memoir, poetry to history, Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust to Go takes the reader on a globetrotting adventure — no passport required.

As a young girl, Josie Dew developed an overpowering urge to travel. She also fell out of a fast-moving vehicle and, rather inconveniently, developed a lifelong aversion to cars. Along came her first bicycle, and she has never looked back. Four continents, thirty-six countries and eighty thousand miles worth of astounding adventures, eccentric characters, varied cultures and ever-enduring optimism are the result of her travels. From Saharan locust invasions to tree-climbing goats, and a customs official who wouldn't let her leave India because 'You are making me a very fine wife', her encounters are described with honesty, wit and perception. Strange incidents and bizarre circumstances punctuate her journeys: in Nepal she met a team of Frenchmen running from Paris to China, and a cyclist on his way from one Olympic Games to the next. In Udaipur she was greeted by everyone with the refrain 'Hello Mr. Jamie Bond Octopussy filmed here', whilst her view of post-Ceausescu Romania, a nation suffering and starving, affected her both physically and mentally. THE WIND IN MY WHEELS is informative, illuminating, and ceaselessly amusing.