Andrew Bibby


 

    Contact Andrew Bibby

 

   

 

Quality writing about the landscape and the outdoors

Since I live in a beautiful area of England, I am fortunate that I am able to combine work with pleasure. I am a member of Gritstone Publishing Co-operative, the authors' co-operative specialising in books on the countryside and the outdoors.

OUTDOOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 

(Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild awards, October 2018)

Back Roads Through Middle England (Gritstone Publishing)

Andrew Bibby sets out to cycle from the English Channel to the Humber, following the great stone belt of ‘cotswold’ limestone which has left its mark so powerfully on the countryside. This is a journey of discovery into a very special landscape, and the author draws on themes as varied as social history, literature, land usage, agriculture and rural life today to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that shape the land.

This is a wonderful book which celebrates the beauty of this area of England, but which also does very much more. Thoughtful, well-informed, sometimes provocative, Andrew Bibby goes beyond the superficial to reveal a Middle England which is considerably more complex than many might imagine.

You can order Back Roads through Middle England via the Gritstone website.  An ebook edition for Kindle is also available.


Also on an outdoor theme - but fiction, rather than non-fiction - are my three crime novels in The Cumbrian Fells trilogy. Too Hot for Comfort was published in October 2020. The Bad Step and In the Cold of the Night are already available. All three are published by Gritstone Publishing Co-operative and are also available as Kindle ebooks. 

The Bad Step

In the Cold of the Night


Walking in Purbeck (Dovecote Press)

This book has been in print for some twenty-five years, a tribute perhaps to the continuing popularity for walkers of the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, on England's south coast. A new (fourth) edition of the book, complete with OS maps, was published by Dovecote Press in Spring 2010. (Click on the image above to access two extracts from the book).


The Backbone of England: Landscape and life on the Pennine watershed

Published March 2008 (hardback). Revised paperback edition published March 2011. Now out of print, except in the ebook edition (Kindle), £3.50.

"In this wonderful book Andrew Bibby... not only helps us to savour the Pennine landscape;  he helps us to understand it, and he urges us to cherish it.  He shows us how this land was formed, what has happened and is happening to it, and – in a thoroughly un-preachy kind of way – why it matters.  This is a book of enjoyment and of revelation." - Chris Smith (Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury)

Feb 26th 2011: Andrew Bibby in conversation with interviewer John McCarthy about Backbone of England on BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage programme. Listen again facility currently available (interview begins at timing 20.29)

Extracts from the book available here.


Freedom to Roam Guides

I was the series editor of a collection of books produced to celebrate the arrival in England of the right to roam at will in open country; I was also the author of five of the titles in this series. The books were published by Frances Lincoln Ltd in conjunction with the Ramblers' Association. The books are now out of print.

Wensleydale and Swaledale named as Guidebook of the Year in the Outdoor Writers' Guild annual awards

Published in March 2006:

  • Wharfedale and Nidderdale (the southern Yorkshire Dales)
  • Wensleydale and Swaledale (the northern Yorkshire Dales) Now out of print

Published in March 2005:

  • South Pennines and the Bronte Moors
  • Forest of Bowland with Pendle Hill and West Pennine Moors
  • The Pennine Divide

Reviews include The Guardian


Selected journalism on an outdoors theme:


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