Publishes 1st April 2026 – order now for shipping in late March
By Daniel Start, Lucy Grewcock & Elsa Hammond
Discover river meadows and lost ruins, camp in ancient forests, and watch the sunset from a hillfort. Picnic at a secret cove and swim to a desert island. Enjoy the best artisan food, straight from the farm or fields.
Discover the best adventures in Southern and Eastern England with 1,250 hidden, wild and authentic locations. Completely updated from the best-selling first edition. Discover Norfolk and Suffolk’s wild coast and dunes, the Cotswolds and Thames wild swimming rivers, Hampshire and the New Forest’s finest woodlands, and the ancient ridgetops and old ways of Sussex and Kent. With dazzling photography, evocative travel writing, detailed maps and thousands of coordinates, this is the perfect reference for adventurers, walkers, campervanners and families, as well as the armchair explorer.
From the award-winning Wild Guide series, completely updated with 250 new entries, taking you to places no other guidebooks reach: 300 wild swims and hidden beaches; 180 lost ruins and sacred places; 250 ancient forests and meadows; and 500 of the most authentic, wild and sustainable places to forage, eat and sleep.
- Wild swimming, paddleboarding, waterfalls and riverside picnics
- Secret coves, creeks and beaches; wild dunes and ancient harbours
- Ancient woodlands, summer meadows and wildlife wonders
- Lost ruins, hidden castles, sacred stones, wild shrines and holloways
- Caves and crypts, grottoes and follies, cliffs and caverns
- Sunset hill forts and wild camping, hilltops and viewpoints
- Regenerative and organic farms, microbreweries, artisanal producers and historic pubs
- Campfire and waterside campsites, treehouses and rustic hideaways
Winner of the Travmedia Awards ‘Travel Guidebook of the Year’
About the authors
Daniel Start grew up in London exploring the home counties. He is the author of the best-selling Wild Swimming and Wild Guide series.
Lucy Grewcock is an award-winning adventure travel writer from the Nene Valley and Sussex.
Elsa Hammond is an award-winning travel writer from Kent and Oxford, with a background in environmental writing and ocean rowing.
Explore ancient forests and lost ruins, swim in secret coves and find smugglers’ sea caves. Buy local produce and picnic in a meadow of orchids and rare butterflies. Watch the sunset from an Iron Age hillfort, search for nightjars at dusk, then wild camp as the sky turns indigo and fills with stars.
This second edition of the Wild Guide is a celebration of the most beautiful places that lie hidden, just off the beaten path. Within is a whole lifetime of joyful exploration and simple pleasures. And these special places are on your very doorstep.
Great adventures
In our modern digital world, much is made of our new-found freedoms – to work remotely, be contactable anywhere and always be online. Yet these ‘freedoms’ keep us tethered to our technology, disconnected from our surroundings and busier than ever.
Our children spend more time indoors and in front of screens than ever before. Deprived of beneficial wild experiences, they can develop ‘nature-deficit disorder’ that can lead to attention problems, obesity, anxiety, and depression.
Our remedy is a big dose of simple adventures of
the most natural kind. Exploring the wilder places that lie on the edge of everyday life and throwing yourself into new experiences makes us happier and healthier. There are rivers for swimming or canoeing in, moors and meadows to camp in, ancient pathways for night-time walks, woods and ruins to explore and subterranean worlds to discover. Straying out of your comfort zone is not without risk, but new adventures can bring an enormous sense of freedom and satisfaction.
Hidden places
Think of the South East and urban sprawl and gridlock on the M25 may come to mind. Yet once you know where to look you’ll find a region of extraordinary history, peace and beauty. Its many great rivers beckon you to enter their cool waters; its varied coastline changes dramatically from great chalk cliffs to sweeping sandy dunes; its ancient woodland and parkland are filled with 1,000-year-old trees, ruined churches and strange follies.
Our formula for getting away from the crowds is based on the magic of some of these key places:
Wild coast: The intertidal zone is perhaps the greatest wild area in the UK today – a no-man’s land continually covered and then revealed by the great ocean. Secret coves and caves await the adventurous, while precipitous cliffs and rugged coastal paths offer a challenge that rewards and invigorates in equal measure.
Rivers and lakes: The beautiful, natural waterways that shape our verdant landscape offer wonderful wild corridors that are ideal for swimming, canoeing, fishing and embracing a slower pace of life.
Sunset hillforts: To watch the sunset is to squeeze the very last juice from the day. It’s a unique opportunity to feel the subtle changes around you as birds roost, dusk settles, and nocturnal creatures begin to stir. Hilltops provide an ideal vantage point and many are also rich in Iron and Bronze Age history.
Ancient woods: These rich fragments of once great forests are places to wander in peace and awe. They invite you to camp out, build dens, climb trees and forage for wild food.
Lost ruins and sacred places: There are so many relics of Britain’s history to inspire us, from stone circles to lost villages, strange follies to wartime forts. Ruins offer adventure and romance, and transport us to another world and time.
Meadows and wildlife: To be surrounded by wild, unspoilt beauty, from carpets of divinely scented bluebells in May to the uplifting sight of a falcon swooping overhead, is to be reminded of the power of nature. It can help to reconnect us and reawaken our sense of wonder.
The good life
For a truly wholesome feel, travel to the locations in this guide by walking, canoeing, cycling, swimming or horse riding, and then eat hearty local food of known provenance, created with care, ideally grown organically or on a regenerative farm. A bit of light foraging can be satisfying too, especially for the most abundant treats, including wild garlic, mussels and maybe a line-caught mackerel, all cooked up on a little driftwood fire. After some stargazing, camp on a beach or by a stream – perfect for a quick dip in the morning.
This Wild Guide was one of the first we published, and we chose southern and eastern England to show how many simple and amazing adventures can be found close to London, in our most densely populated region. The South East is also a place we know, love and spent our childhoods exploring, so the idea of an intimate local guide, filled with secret destinations and special places, appealed. Along the way, we have met many people living simpler, richer lives, such as artisan producers making traditional foods and smallholders who tend to their pigs and chickens alongside guests.
The end result is a compendium of wonderful adventures and wild places. It is packed full of memories of wild campsites, night-walks, foraging missions, sunset hilltop hikes, canoe trips at dawn and countless dips into chalky streams and still lakes. And all without flying, or queuing, or paying much at all. We hope this book inspires many more wild and wonderful escapades – do write and tell us how you get on.
Dan, Lucy and Elsa, 2026
[email protected]
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