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7 days ago
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‘Intertidal' by Yuvan Aves makes the shortlist for the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing
The Wainwright Prizes announced its shortlist on Tuesday. Indian writer and naturalist Yuvan Aves has made the shortlist for the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing for his book Intertidal: A Coast and Marsh Diary. He is the first Indian to be nominated for the award. The shortlist comprises seven titles. The prize showcases writing that reflects its namesake Alfred Wainwright's values of celebrating nature and our environment, nurturing respect for our planet, and informing readers of the threats that the earth currently faces. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on September 10 at FarmED in Oxford, UK. The other books on the shortlist are: Callum Robinson's Ingrained is a tribute to trees, timber, and craftsmanship, while Yuvan Aves' Intertidal reveals an unseen world, asking us to reimagine values to live by. Paul Lamb's Of Thorn and Briar celebrates the benefits of hedgerows and a way of living that has all but disappeared, and Merlin Hanbury-Tenison's Our Oaken Bones connects personal history with the natural environment. Chloe Dalton's Raising Hare chronicles an extraordinary relationship between human and animal, while Richard Mabey's The Accidental Garden explores gardens as places of cultural and ecological fusion. Finally, Jason Allen-Paisant's The Possibility of Tenderness explores personal and people's history through plants and migration.
NZ Herald
23-07-2025
- NZ Herald
Britain's 10 best multi-day walks and hikes
South West Coast Path (1014km) Best for dramatic coastal scenery One of Britain's longest National Trails, the South West Coast Path runs from Minehead in Somerset, along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, before finishing at Poole Harbour in Dorset. The path scales the tops of rugged cliffs, skirts the ruins of old tin mines and drops down into traditional fishing villages and secluded coves along the way. The South West Coast Path is partly based on trails created by coastguards patrolling the area for smugglers that once abounded in these parts. The full length can take several weeks, while various sections (such as the four to five days between St Ives and Penzance) can be done by utilising local bus routes to return to your accommodation after a day's walking. The South West Coast Path passes by the medieval church at Church Cove, Gunwalloe on Cornwall's Lizard Peninsula. Photo / Andrew Marshal Coast to Coast Walk (306km) Best for enjoying England's national parks The late Alfred Wainwright, England's best-loved fell walker, once wrote that a walk without a goal is like life without ambition – aimless wandering. The 196-mile Coast to Coast Walk across northern England certainly has a goal, which is to cross an island and to gaze over another ocean. The countryside is astonishingly beautiful and varied, accompanying the walker on a roller-coaster of three spectacular national parks: The Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and Yorkshire Moors. Traditionally, the walk is completed west to east, starting at St Bees Head and finishing at Robin Hood's Bay, and takes about 12-14 days. A hiker climbs a stile on the Coast to Coast Walk on the first day's walking from St Bees. Photo / Andrew Marshall St Oswald's Way (156km) Best for history lovers keen on castles or Christian7th-century heritage Opened in 2006, this six-day hike links various sites with the life of St Oswald, the 7th-century Anglo-Saxon king largely responsible for the introduction of Christianity to Northern England. The walk begins in Heavenfield (near Hadrian's Wall) and stretches to Holy Island on the Northumberland Coast. The trail traverses a range of landscapes from rolling farmland and heather moorland to sandstone crags and one of Britain most beautiful stretches of coastline dotted with ancient castles such as Warkworth, Dunstanburgh, Bamburgh and Lindisfarne. Calderdale Way (80km) Best for industrial heritage and moorland views Officially starting at Clay House in West Vale, the route encircles the industrial mill towns of Ripponden, Todmorden, Hebden Bridge, Halifax and Brighouse, following ancient packhorse trails across the open gritstone hillsides, including a canal towpath section. Highlights include medieval settlements at Lumbutts and Mankinholes, the hilltop weaving village of Hepstonstall (home to the imposing ruins of the 13th-century St Thomas a' Becket church), the beautiful wooded valley of Cragg Vale, and panoramic views of Calderdale from the scenic lookout of Stoodley Pike. The walk can be comfortably broken down into four day-long sections of between 18.5 and 22km. Calderdale Way near Ripponden. Photo / Andrew Marshall Pennine Way (431km) Best for seasoned hikers chasing a rugged challenge Since opening in 1965, Britain's first National Trail has been known as England's toughest long-distance walk because of its infamous muddy peat bogs and notoriously inclement weather, but the upgrading of the path in recent years has tamed the beast. Starting in Edale in the Peak District, the trail runs up the spine of England to finish at Kirk Yetholm just inside the Scottish border. According to Wikipedia, the full length of the iconic route includes 204 bridges, 287 gates, 249 timber stiles, 183 stone stiles, with a total ascent greater than Mt Everest. Depending on fitness levels, the Pennine Way can be comfortably divided into 17 day-long stages. Cleveland Way (177km) Best for moorland solitude and striking seaside charm Showcasing Yorkshire's diverse scenery, this horseshoe-shaped long-distance path heads north from the attractive market town of Helmsley, arching east through the great expanse of heather moorland of the North York Moors National Park to Saltburn-by-the-Sea, then hugs the coastline south to Filey Brigg. Key attractions include characterful fishing villages like Staithes and Robin Hood's Bay, and the historic whaling port of Whitby with its imposing 13th-century abbey and the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Whitby is renowned for its fish and chips, and the famous Magpie Cafe is one of the best places to sample them after a day's walking. Hadrian's Wall Path (135km) Best for Roman history buffs and ancient fort lovers Stretching coast-to-coast, from Bowness-on-Solway in the west to Wallsend in the east, the Hadrian's Wall Path is especially for fans of ancient British history. The focus here is following Hadrian's Wall – a World Heritage site of epic proportions that marches 73 miles from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, across some of the wildest and most dramatic countryside in northern England. Built on the orders of Emperor Hadrian between AD 122-128, there are 80 mile-castles, 160 turrets and 16 forts dotted along its length, with the best preserved example being Housesteads Roman Fort near Haltwhistle. West Highland Way (154km) Best for cinematic Scottish Highland landscapes Scotland's most popular long-distance hike heads north from the town of Milngavie in the Lowlands to the town of Fort William in the Highlands. The West Highland Way passes through some of Britain's most spectacular scenery, flanked by wild mountains, lochs and fast-flowing rivers, and employs old drovers' roads and old coaching routes. The trail is typically walked from south to north in about 6-8 days, with the final stage featuring the extremely picturesque valley of Glen Nevis, used as a filming location for movies such as Braveheart, Highlander and Harry Potter. Wales Coast Path (1400km) Best for those wanting to walk the coast of a country This is the big one. When it opened in 2012, the Wales Coast Path became the first in the world to follow a country's coastline in its entirety, from the border with England near Chester, all the way to Chepstow in South Wales. This is a journey through thousands of years of history with awe-inspiring views and a multitude of maritime landscapes from rugged cliff tops to windswept beaches and winding estuaries. Depending on fitness levels, it takes around six to nine weeks to complete the route, but more realistically, it lends itself to ticking off sections bit by bit while enjoying the journey at a slower pace. What to know before you go When to go: The summer months of June, July & August are the most popular months for Britain's walking trails with longer daylight hours and hopefully better weather, but early spring (April/May) and autumn (September/October) are quieter, less crowded with a better chance of securing accommodation. Accommodation: Bed & Breakfasts (or B & B's ) are a great British institution and offer walkers a warm bed at the end of a day's walk and a hearty breakfast to begin the next. Other accommodation options along or near walking trails include Airbnb's, local pubs and inns, youth hostels and backpackers. Many long-distance walks can be done with the assistance of 'packhorse' operators who book your accommodation in advance and transport your pack to your next day's accommodation so you don't have to carry it each day, such as Equipment: Worn-in hiking boots, a windproof/waterproof jacket and trousers, thermal tops and hiking sticks are key items to be considered for walks. Britain's weather is varied to say the least, so be prepared for cold and wet conditions at any time of year.
The Guardian
22-07-2025
- The Guardian
The Parallel Path by Jenn Ashworth review – a soul-searching walk across England
When Jenn Ashworth set out on Alfred Wainwright's 192-mile coast-to-coast walk, from St Bees in the west to Robin Hood's Bay in the east, she was stepping out of character. Her daily circular walks round Lancaster during lockdown were no real preparation, and a brief orienteering course was no guarantee that she wouldn't get lost. She wasn't walking for charity or running away from a marriage or, like the fell runner who'd done the route in 39 hours, trying to break any record. A homebody 'inclined to slowness', she was a 40-year-old novelist, professor and mother of two going off on her own for two-and-a-half weeks for reasons she couldn't quite articulate. Not that there weren't contributory factors. Lockdown had left her with post-Covid cabin fever, itchy to be elsewhere after the long months of caring for her family and students ('a one-woman battle against entropy'). She also knew that at every pub and guest house she'd booked en route supportive letters would be waiting from her terminally ill but brilliantly animated friend Clive. Most importantly, although her walking wouldn't be solitary, since she couldn't avoid bumping into other (potentially annoying) hikers, she'd be 'the sole owner of my own skin again'. As she flogs herself 'onwards towards impressiveness', her journey is marked out plainly. The chapters detail the distance and destinations of each day's walk. They also convey how brittle, sour and grumpy she can be, and how blistered and footsore she gets: she might be 'off on a jolly' but there's a price to pay, in pain and guilt. She doesn't go in for nature writing: when she evokes 'the damp green air and the heavy, alive smell of the still-wet branches and mulchy undergrowth', it's a plain-as-muck authentic response, not a 'soft' poeticism. Maybe that's down to her being grittily northern. She does reflect on what it means to come from the north, but her version of northern-ness isn't Alfred Wainwright's, whose 'gruff complaining' she engages with throughout – enjoyably and sometimes scathingly. He's not the only fellow traveller in her head. Nor is Clive, with his letters, nor Ben, her late first husband, whose 24 marathons in 24 months, completed after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, were an amazing achievement. Mostly it's writers she carries with her – Henry David Thoreau, William Hazlitt, Werner Herzog (who walked from Munich to Paris to see his dying mentor) and Virginia Woolf – whose ideas inspire her own. (Had it come out sooner, David Nicholls's novel of last year covering the same route, You Are Here, might have featured too.) What's captivating about her book is all the thinking she does mid- or post-trek: on writing, friendship, welfare, illness, Charles Atlas, climate change, protest marches, knitting, and why it is that in popular mythology 'walking women' are either models on a catwalk or sex workers. As she wanders, her mind wanders. Solvitur ambulando: she's not sure what exactly it is she's trying to solve by walking, but the book's as much an invigorating mental workout as it is a hard physical trudge. Memories surface, too, from childhood and adolescence: of a girl called Alice she knew who died in a 'horrible accident' when Ashworth was 10 and whose photo she hid in a bottle; of her volunteering for the Samaritans as one of the women (Brendas, they were called) who'd listen on the phone to distressed or lonely callers, including men who'd masturbate as they talked; of how she returned to Preston from Cambridge University 34 weeks pregnant at the age of 21 and made it her home again. In her last nonfiction book, Notes Made While Falling, Ashworth devised a method that married narrative fragments with philosophising lyrical essays. Here the storyline is simpler – a walk, start to finish – but the method is much the same. Towards the end comes the threat of failure. She loses her balance and falls – no injury is sustained, but the dizziness feels ominous. Then a heatwave arrives, making the scheduled completion of the walk impossible. The complications gather to a major health crisis, closer to home than the one affecting Clive. Mercifully, there's an upbeat outcome, adding another layer to the motif of care. The walk that the author saw 'as a break from the labour of care turned out to be a path that led me deeper into understanding my own need for it'. 'Not until we have lost the world do we begin to find ourselves,' Thoreau wrote. Ashworth didn't walk 192 miles in order to find herself. But she's newly conscious afterwards not of her stamina and sure-footedness but of her frailty, of how 'my body is more fragmented and vulnerable than I wanted it to be'. Despite her guise as an 'armoured little being stomping her way across the entire country', she's forced to embrace a new kind of gentleness. And rather than exulting in independence, she's back among friends and freshly available to 'the traffic of love'. Chastened but buoyant, she's stimulating to be with, her book the best kind of walking companion. The Parallel Path: Love, Grit and Walking the North by Jenn Ashworth is published by Sceptre (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
21-07-2025
- The Guardian
The Parallel Path by Jenn Ashworth review – a soul-searching walk across England
When Jenn Ashworth set out on Alfred Wainwright's 192-mile coast-to-coast walk, from St Bees in the west to Robin Hood's Bay in the east, she was stepping out of character. Her daily circular walks round Lancaster during lockdown were no real preparation, and a brief orienteering course was no guarantee that she wouldn't get lost. She wasn't walking for charity or running away from a marriage or, like the fell runner who'd done the route in 39 hours, trying to break any record. A homebody 'inclined to slowness', she was a 40-year-old novelist, professor and mother of two going off on her own for two-and-a-half weeks for reasons she couldn't quite articulate. Not that there weren't contributory factors. Lockdown had left her with post-Covid cabin fever, itchy to be elsewhere after the long months of caring for her family and students ('a one-woman battle against entropy'). She also knew that at every pub and guest house she'd booked en route supportive letters would be waiting from her terminally ill but brilliantly animated friend Clive. Most importantly, although her walking wouldn't be solitary, since she couldn't avoid bumping into other (potentially annoying) hikers, she'd be 'the sole owner of my own skin again'. As she flogs herself 'onwards towards impressiveness', her journey is marked out plainly. The chapters detail the distance and destinations of each day's walk. They also convey how brittle, sour and grumpy she can be, and how blistered and footsore she gets: she might be 'off on a jolly' but there's a price to pay, in pain and guilt. She doesn't go in for nature writing: when she evokes 'the damp green air and the heavy, alive smell of the still-wet branches and mulchy undergrowth', it's a plain-as-muck authentic response, not a 'soft' poeticism. Maybe that's down to her being grittily northern. She does reflect on what it means to come from the north, but her version of northern-ness isn't Alfred Wainwright's, whose 'gruff complaining' she engages with throughout – enjoyably and sometimes scathingly. He's not the only fellow traveller in her head. Nor is Clive, with his letters, nor Ben, her late first husband, whose 24 marathons in 24 months, completed after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, were an amazing achievement. Mostly it's writers she carries with her – Henry David Thoreau, William Hazlitt, Werner Herzog (who walked from Munich to Paris to see his dying mentor) and Virginia Woolf – whose ideas inspire her own. (Had it come out sooner, David Nicholls's novel of last year covering the same route, You Are Here, might have featured too.) What's captivating about her book is all the thinking she does mid- or post-trek: on writing, friendship, welfare, illness, Charles Atlas, climate change, protest marches, knitting, and why it is that in popular mythology 'walking women' are either models on a catwalk or sex workers. As she wanders, her mind wanders. Solvitur ambulando: she's not sure what exactly it is she's trying to solve by walking, but the book's as much an invigorating mental workout as it is a hard physical trudge. Memories surface, too, from childhood and adolescence: of a girl called Alice she knew who died in a 'horrible accident' when Ashworth was 10 and whose photo she hid in a bottle; of her volunteering for the Samaritans as one of the women (Brendas, they were called) who'd listen on the phone to distressed or lonely callers, including men who'd masturbate as they talked; of how she returned to Preston from Cambridge University 34 weeks pregnant at the age of 21 and made it her home again. In her last nonfiction book, Notes Made While Falling, Ashworth devised a method that married narrative fragments with philosophising lyrical essays. Here the storyline is simpler – a walk, start to finish – but the method is much the same. Towards the end comes the threat of failure. She loses her balance and falls – no injury is sustained, but the dizziness feels ominous. Then a heatwave arrives, making the scheduled completion of the walk impossible. The complications gather to a major health crisis, closer to home than the one affecting Clive. Mercifully, there's an upbeat outcome, adding another layer to the motif of care. The walk that the author saw 'as a break from the labour of care turned out to be a path that led me deeper into understanding my own need for it'. 'Not until we have lost the world do we begin to find ourselves,' Thoreau wrote. Ashworth didn't walk 192 miles in order to find herself. But she's newly conscious afterwards not of her stamina and sure-footedness but of her frailty, of how 'my body is more fragmented and vulnerable than I wanted it to be'. Despite her guise as an 'armoured little being stomping her way across the entire country', she's forced to embrace a new kind of gentleness. And rather than exulting in independence, she's back among friends and freshly available to 'the traffic of love'. Chastened but buoyant, she's stimulating to be with, her book the best kind of walking companion. The Parallel Path: Love, Grit and Walking the North by Jenn Ashworth is published by Sceptre (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Scroll.in
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Intertidal' by Indian writer Yuvan Aves longlisted for 2025 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing
Indian writer and naturalist Yuvan Aves has been longlisted for the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing for his book Intertidal: A Coast and Marsh Diary. He is the first Indian to be nominated for the award. The longlist comprises 12 titles. Over two years and three monsoons, Yuvan Aves paid scrupulous attention to the living world of a coastal city. The result was a diary of deep observation of the coast and wetland, climate and self. Set in beaches and marshes, and the wild places of the mind, Intertidal comprises daily accounts of being in a multispecies milieu. The shortlist will be announced on August 5, and the winner on September 10. Now in its 12th year, the Wainwright Prizes are named after nature writer Alfred Wainwright. The Prizes recognise books that shape a greener future and help readers see the natural world, and their place within it, more clearly. From personal journeys through wild landscapes to bold investigations into environmental challenges, these are the stories that connect people and planet. This year, the Prizes will be awarded in six categories
