A book about living or travelling somewhere wild, camping, settling somewhere new

[PeonyFlush72]

Hello, can you help recommend a book for me please?

I'm interested in people leaving behind normal suburban or city life and either travelling or living somewhere simple.

For example, travelling around in a camper van, or doing an epic journey camping. Not visiting famous places etc just basic exploring and experiences.

Or maybe someone moving to rural x and doing up a house and starting a new life.

I loved the Carol Drinkwater books, also enjoyed Alex Roddie and the Hildasay walker.

(Can you tell that I'm rather unfulfilled with my stuffy safe suburban life?!)

Thanks in advance.

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn.

Perfect thanks, just ordered it!

The 100 mile diet

100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating amzn.eu/d/5H8oVWw

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating amzn.eu/d/iWsGESL

Moods of Future Joys and Thunder & Sunshine by Alastair Humphreys.

Second The Salt Path - not at all a book I would have normally picked. Got given it as a present and I loved it. Re-read it over again when I need to feel some sense of connection to something simpler than my slightly manic life!

I came on here to say The Salt Path too!

Heroes of the frontier, Dave Eggers

Two novels, neither of them new, both of which stayed with me due to the power of the stories. I'm not sure they quite fit what you're looking for but they are both about living outside civilisation, and both have totally amazing woman protagonists. Into the Forest by Jean Hegland, and Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot.

One man and his bike by Mike Carter
Coasting Elise Downing
Homesick by Catrina Davies
Strayed by Cheryl Wild
One Woman Walks Wales by Ursula Martin

Lots of books about the Camino de Santiago

Wild by Cheryl Strayed is one of my favourite books. Conversely I loathed the Salt Path as I felt the narrator was the type of person who blames everyone else for her problems when actually she’s just got poor judgement. Also while I know memoirs are allowed to stray from the absolute truth, if you’re going to make stuff up at least make it 1. Credible and 2. Entertaining.

This is a genre of books I love!!
Some suggestions :

• Dervla Murphy - she has written loads of travel books, my favourites are Full Tilt, Eight feet in the Andes and the one about Coorg in India (can't remember the exact title!) she writes about the adventures she has doing pretty hard core travelling with her young daughter.
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed - a story of a woman deciding to walk the Pacific Crest Trail in the US and how it changed her life.
• Tracks by Robin Davis (I think!) - true story of a woman who walks across the western Australia desert with a dog and a couple of camels.
• Raynor Winn as recommended above.
• fiction (although I think it is autobiographical) Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud - the story of a young single mum who moves to Morocco with her two young daughters in the 60's, told from the youngest child's viewpoint.

Waterlog - Roger Deakin
He swims round Britain.

Much older, possibly not what you are really after - A Place of Stones, Hill Farm Story and Along Came a Llama about a family who move from the urban NW of England to very rural N Wales as subsistence farmers in the 1950s.

Seconding Wild by Cheryl Strayed it's exactly what you want

Annie Hawes - Extra Virgin and sequels

@LaPalmaLlama

You have got me intrigued now about The Salt Path! Do you know something we don’t?!

Nan Shepherd - The Living Mountain
Helen MacDonald - H is for Hawk / Vesper Flights
Amy Liptrot - The Outrun
Melissa Harrison - Rain: Four Walks in English Weather
Isabella Tree - Wilding
Hugh Thompson - The Green Road Into the Trees

Robert MacFarlane
Kathleen Jamie

Some good recommendations on here
www.goodreads.com/list/show/26902.British_and_Irish_Nature_Writing

Happy escaping!

Also bit out there but A Town Called Alice by Neville Shute sort of fits your brief. Story is in two parts - one set during the 2nd world war and then the main character’s experience of being in Alice Springs and building a new life there post war. Such a great book!

A walk in the woods - Bill Bryson

Loved Wilding.

I really enjoyed Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart, he and his wife go and buy a very remote farm in Andalusia.

The Good Life: Up the Yukon Without a Paddle
by Dorian Amos

Read this years ago - it was really good

Another vote for Tracks by Robyn Davidson. The author seems like such an incredible woman, I loved her courage in persevering to even get to begin her adventure. Trekking alone with camels across the Australian Outback in the 1970s makes the standard “I went on a long walk” books feel a bit lacklustre to me in comparison.

@LaPalmaLlama
Raynor Winn is open about how they lost their farm and became homeless. I reckon any of us would feel the loss of our home badly if it was due to a friend duping us.

She is writing about her innermost thoughts and emotions. She’s not covering up her darkest thoughts to come over well. That’s what makes the journey so satisfying.

Agreed I felt there was a real lack of honesty that marred what was otherwise quite a well written book.

spoiler alert

No- at least I don’t think so. This is just the impression I got from the book.I don’t know her personally or anything like that!! I found the whole repeated “mistaken identity” thing ludicrous. It’s not like he resembled David Beckham. Clearly a #thathappened moment. Also I just didn’t believe a lot of her encounters along the way- they seemed v wooden and made up to make the point she wanted to make that anyone who is poor is lovely and gentle and selfless and anyone who can afford a tent or did a minimum of planning is twatty. None of the people they met had any complexity of nuance to them. I guess also there was just no epiphany. She didn’t change as a result of the walk so what’s the point of the book? She just carried on blaming everyone else for what happened to them when it was their own decision to invest in an unlimited liability investment that did them over- and I’m sure it looked very lucrative at the outset, so she’s quite the capitalist herself when all is said and done.