SHORTLISTED: Wainwright Prize
‍‘Agile, wryly funny and wise’ Robert Macfarlane
After years of expeditions all over the world, adventurer Alastair Humphreys spends a year exploring the detailed local map around his home.
Can this unassuming landscape, marked by the glow of city lights and the hum of busy roads, hold any surprises for the world traveller or satisfy his wanderlust? Could a single map provide a lifetime of exploration?
Discovering more about the natural world than in all his years in remote environments, he learns the value of truly getting to know his neighbourhood.
An ode to slowing down , Local is a celebration of curiosity and time spent outdoors, as well as a rallying cry to protect the wild places on our doorstep.

‘A paean to the benefits of determined noticing. What really shines through its pages is Humphreys’ omnivorous curiosity’

-- Financial Times
‘Thanks to some genuinely thoughtful writing about planet, place and political purpose, Humphreys finds beauty in the scruffy margins and makes readers look anew at what might easily be familiar or forgotten’ -- The Observer
‘Inspires its readers to slow down and experience the nature that surrounds us, while also serving as a reminder that there’s plenty to delight, inspire and even challenge without ever having to hop on a plane or even get in a car’ -- Smithsonian Magazine, the ten best travel books of 2024
‘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
‘Alastair Humphreys is the consummate roamer: big of heart, curious of mind, light of step’ -- Amy-Jane Beer, winner of the 2023 Wainwright Prize

‘A vivid, wry, angry, passionate read from Mr Adventure’

-- Saga Magazine

‘It may at first seem strange to have a book on this list that’s the exact opposite of what we typically think when we think of travel (leaving home), but that’s the magic of it! Alastair Humphreys’ Local is an exploration of the places called home, all fuelled by the author’s single question: “Could I make exploring my backyard as fulfilling as travelling the world?” It’s a fascinating look into one man’s search for discovery, and it might just inspire you to go and discover the world you’ve never noticed that exists right down the road’

-- Travel Pulse, Ten of the Best Travel Books of 2024

‘A few weeks ago, I finished reading what I think is now one of my favorite adventure books, and I got inspired. Because books can do that. Alastair Humphreys’ Local was the catalyst for one of the least epic, but most satisfying adventures of my recent life’

-- Brendan Leonard * Outside Magazine *

‘Here on his home patch Alastair Humphreys unlocks countless stories of nature, history, the marvels of the universe, you name it and more besides. But of course it is exactly because he is one of our greatest living explorers that he is able to turn his local turf into an adventure playground’

-- Greg Hackett * Love Reading *

‘An inspiring account of the discoveries to be made on the turf we take for granted’

-- Deskbound Traveller, Books of the Year 2024

‘This is a book to savour, particularly if you’re someone who’s interested in anything and everything. Humphreys creates a melange of facts as interlaced as a spider’s web. The book provides perfect inspiration for exploring your locality, uncovering some fascinating information along the way’

-- Dorset Magazine

‘I wholeheartedly recommend the book. Anything that establishes the view that exploration is an attitude, not an activity, has to be a good thing. The physical bounds of our children will be smaller than ours. It is up to us to show that by rewilding the mind and finding adventure in the commonplace, a life constrained by necessity is  still a life worth living’

-- Chris Gibson Wildlife

‘I’m currently reading a wonderful book called Local, by British explorer Alastair Humphreys. He finds beauty and joy in the small spaces of nature close to home. Recently, exploring a small village outside my hometown of Cambridge, I was thrilled to spot a brown trout. It was the first I’ve encountered in decades of exploring the waterways near my home, and the exhilaration was no less than when I first saw oscar cichlids in the Pantanal wetlands of Brazil. Like Alastair, I had found wonder close to home’

-- Tai Strietman * Practical Fishkeeping *

‘Witty and gritty, affectionate and mildly censorious, eager and sometimes weary. This is still a book of a traveller and adventurer – it’s just he can cycle home quite quickly each day. Readable, well-written, stimulating’

-- Mark Avery

‘If you want a very different sort of travel book and one that you can use as a springboard to find out what is in your local area then this is a really good place to start’

-- Halfman, Halfbook

‘Humphreys shares the joy he has gained from looking at odd, liminal places, areas he thought would be boring and the details of plants and birds, which makes it a life-affirming and positive book even through the warnings and worry’

-- Shiny New Books

Alastair Humphreys is a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.
He has cycled around the world, rowed the Atlantic Ocean and walked a lap of the M25 - one of his pioneering microadventures. He is the best-selling author of 14 books, including Great Adventurers, which won the Stanford's Children's Travel Book of the Year and the Teach Primary Award for Non-Fiction.
He has written eight books for Eye including the best-selling The Boy Who Biked the World trilogy, a series of novels for 9-12-year-olds based on the real-life adventures he recounted in Moods of Future Joys, Thunder and Sunshine and Ten Lessons from the Road. His more recent The Girl Who Rowed the Ocean is a similarly novelised version of his transatlantic crossing. He is a qualified teacher and host of the Living Adventurously podcast.