The New Forest is hardly the sort of wild or remote place where you would expect to get lost, especially if you are an experienced traveller, but Douglas Botting managed it. ‘There were no sounds of civilization to give us a bearing on the outside world, no distinguishable landmarks, just trees, and more trees, and clearings, thickets, groves, gullies leading nowhere in particular, and trees again.’
As he explains in this warm and lyrical book, it does not do to underestimate wild Britain. He makes a wonderful job of showing you around, taking you from the broad-leaf woodlands of southern England to the wind-lashed basalt and granite cliffs of the Outer Hebrides. Whether he is celebrating the rolling Yorkshire Dales of his childhood, where the lapwings cried and the bluebottles huzzahed in the cowpats, or engaging with the earth-shattering intricacies of plate tectonics, Douglas Botting is always readable and entertaining. The book also describes in detail where to go fishing, climbing, cycling, caving, riding, camping and even ballooning, and offers some unusual ideas for where to stay, including the time capsule of Kinloch Castle on the Isle of Rhum, intact in every detail down to the scoreboard of its Edwardian billiard room.