Exploring the very local. Looking for nature, wildness, simplicity, perhaps even adventure. Putting nearby nature in everyday lives.

• ‘Alastair Humphreys shows us that space is deep as well as wide, and that one need travel only a few hundred yards to become an explorer of the undiscovered country of the nearby. This agile, wryly funny and wise book is dedicated to — as the Australian poet Les Murray once put it — being “only interested in everything”.’ – Robert Macfarlane
• ‘While a grand trip might offer novelty and excitement, there’s adventure to be found in territories much closer to home.’ – New York Times
• ‘Genuinely thoughtful writing about planet, place and political purpose’ – The Observer
• ‘What really shines through its pages is Humphreys’ omnivorous curiosity… A paean to the benefits of determined noticing.’ – FT
• ‘Humphreys has long encouraged his readers to have “microadventures”, and this is a powerful thought — travel can be something you do close to home, and a place that feels as if a strange land might be merely a short walk away.’ – Financial Times, Opinion, April 8, 2024.
• ‘Alastair Humphreys is the consummate roamer: big of heart, curious of mind, light of step.’ – Amy-Jane Beer, winner of the 2023 Wainwright Prize for nature writing
• ‘This looks wonderful. Localism isn’t better economically. It often isn’t more sustainable. But it is important because care and love can really only be local. Localism is about noticing the things and people you can actually affect.’ – Henry Dimbleby
• ‘Local is a fascinatingly candid portrait of the contemporary countryside, painted with honesty, humanity and humility. Alastair’s forays across his neighbourhood map give us the keys to a hidden world, showing how to find beauty and wonder in even in the most unlikely places. A wonderful, eye-opening book.’ – Lee Schofield, Winner of the Richard Jefferies Award, 2023, Highly Commended in the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Conservation, 2022
• ‘The prose sparkles and spreads warmth from the pages of this book: witty and gritty, affectionate and mildly censorious, eager and sometimes weary… To summarise – this is a very good, readable, well-written, stimulating, interesting book.’ – Dr Mark Avery, former RSPB Conservation Director
• ‘I wholeheartedly recommend the book: it’s one I wish I had written myself. Anything that establishes the view that exploration is an attitude, not an activity, has to be a good thing.’ – Chris Gibson, conservationist and naturalist
• ‘Enjoying this.’ – Stuart Maconie
• ‘If you’ve ever wondered whether you put down roots in the right place for adventure, this book is for you…. Local is a book for those curious about everything and anything. I savoured every tiny detail, every minute morsel of information in this book, folding down page corners in the hopes I’ll remember tidbits to share with pals next time we’re at a pub quiz.’ – The Great Outdoors
• ‘A major task for the Royal Geographical Society is to encourage and enable everyone to ‘travel with purpose’ – with curiosity, generosity and ‘care’ in all senses of the word. Alastair Humphrey’s book delivers on this mission with infectious energy and a very generous sense of universal invitation. His message is that everyone can be – and should be – an explorer today.’ – The Royal Geographical Society
• ‘I absolutely LOVED ‘Local’! There was something profoundly gentle and powerful about its accessible everyday curiosity, and deft links between the immediate and distant, and under your nose to global challenges and issues.’ – Ed Gillespie from the John Richardson and the Futurenauts podcast.

After years of cycling continents, rowing oceans, and trekking across deserts and ice caps, adventurer Alastair Humphreys turns his eye closer to home by asking, ‘is a single map enough exploration?’

Outside Alastair’s front door lies an unassuming landscape marked by the glow of city lights and hum of busy roads. The Ordnance Survey map he lives on shows twenty square kilometres criss-crossed with motorways, train tracks, towns, villages, and intensively managed farmland. Alastair spends a year exploring what surprises are waiting for him on this single map. What wildness and curiosities are we missing close to home? What are we not aware of? Can we put nearby nature into everyday lives? To think globally, but act locally.

Alastair finds peace and solitude in abandoned factories, beauty on neglected estuarine marshland, and incurs the wrath of a farmer tormented by a public footpath crossing his private land. Once he slows down enough to pay attention and really observe, Alastair realises that a landscape will never become quite familiar, no matter how long you have lived there.

A Single Map is a celebration that enjoying wildness, the mental and physical benefits of nature, being curious, paying attention, noticing more, and slowing down are possible for everyone, everywhere, and every day.

• Buy the book here or on Kindle here or Audible here– or click here for addresses outside the UK.

• If you cannot afford to buy the book, you can reserve the book at your library, or I’m happy for you to download a PDF of the book or the Kindle file.

• Listen to the book as a podcast here.

• Look at photos from the year here.

• Examine the footnotes and sources for the material here.

• A list of books that inspired me while I wrote Local.

• Read the original blog posts I wrote, here.

• Here are some useful resources if you’re interested in exploring your own map:

• Buy your own Explorer map (1:25,000). www.shop.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/custom-made
• Many other countries have similar mapping agencies to the Ordnance Survey. For example, try the 1:24,000 topo ‘7.5 minute’ maps in the USA (www.store.usgs.gov), MyTopo for the USA and Canada (findamap.mytopo.com/findamap // www.mapstore.mytopo.com/), the Centre for Topographic Information in Canada (www.gotrekkers.com), NATMAP in Australia (www.xnatmap.org), the Norwegian Mapping Authority (www.kartverket.no), France’s Institut Géographique (www.boutique.ign.fr/cac/cac-grand-public.html), Scanmap in Denmark (www.scanmaps.dk), Calazo for Finland, Norway and Sweden (www.calazo.fi), mySwissMap in Switzerland (www.shop.swisstopo.admin.ch/en), and the IGN in Spain (www.ign.es/csw-inspire/srv/eng/main.home).
• While I prefer to use a paper map for planning adventures, digital versions are also useful. The Ordnance Survey app is excellent for the UK. Maps.me (www.maps.me) and OpenStreetMap (www.openstreetmap.org) are free world maps to explore wherever you live.
• RideWithGPS was invaluable when I tried to cycle through all 400 grid squares.
• Seek identifies the plants and animals all around you. www.inaturalist.org
• Merlin listens to the birds and shows real-time suggestions for who’s singing. www.merlin.allaboutbirds.org
• Star Walk shows a real-time interactive sky map on your phone. www.starwalk.space
• 1000 Hours Outside helps to match nature time with screen time. www.1000hoursoutside.com
• Geocaching is a GPS treasure-hunting game. www.geocaching.com
• Hyperlocal Weather helps you to decide when to dash for a café and when to just dance in the rain. www.hyperlocalweather.app
• UK Soil Observatory has masses of information about the ground you walk on and the ways that land is used. www.ukso.org
• Slow Ways encourages walkers to rediscover unused footpaths and engage in more leisurely walks. www.beta.slowways.org

TAKE ACTION

• If any of the issues raised in this book have made you think, Take the Jump helps you to try six shifts to protect the earth and live with joy. They are clear, constructive, impactful, and doable. www.takethejump.org
• The six challenges are:
• – 1. End Clutter. Keep products for at least seven years
• – 2. Travel Fresh. Avoid personal vehicles where possible
• – 3. Eat Green. A plant-based diet, no waste, a healthy amount
• – 4. Dress Retro. Three new items of clothing per year
• – 5. Holiday Local. One flight every three years
• – 6. Change the System. At least one life shift to nudge the system
• Right to Roam is a campaign for millions more people to have easy access to open space, and the physical, mental and spiritual health benefits that this brings. www.righttoroam.org.uk
• Rewilding Britain aims to tackle the climate emergency and extinction crisis, to reconnect people with the natural world, and help communities thrive. www.rewildingbritain.org.uk
• Trash Free Trails (re)connects people with nature through the simple yet meaningful act of removing single-use pollution from wild places. www.trashfreetrails.org
• Tips on rewilding your garden: www.tinyurl.com/rewildgarden
• Pay attention to environmental and climate policies before deciding who to vote for in elections. See how your MP votes on such issues as river pollution and conservation. Send them a message to let them know what matters to you. www.theyworkforyou.com
• Nature Connectedness from the University of Derby is a free, online short course that shows how we can build a new relationship with nature for the wellbeing of both people and the rest of the natural world. www.tinyurl.com/natureconnectcourse
• Discover people, ideas and news pointing the world in a positive direction. www.theprogressnetwork.org
• These recipes helped to persuade this vegan-mocking carnivore that tasty plant-based food not only existed, but that it was easy and cheap to prepare:
• – The Green Roasting Tin: Vegan and Vegetarian One Dish Dinners: www.tinyurl.com/greenroasting
• – Anna Jones’ Proper Chilli: www.tinyurl.com/properchilli
• – Very easy dhal: www.tinyurl.com/easydhal
• – Sweet potato dhal: www.tinyurl.com/easydhal2

FURTHER READING

I read well over a hundred books while researching this book. Out of all those, these had the greatest impact on me:

• Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life by George Monbiot
• Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape by Henry Dimbleby
• Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot
• The Trespasser’s Companion by Nick Hayes
• The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells
• Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree