My Lockdown Reading List

Like many of you, the COVID-19 lockdown turned my life upside down.  Plans I’d made as I prepared to leave Antarctica have been completely shelved, any potential opportunities remain just that.  Both the travel and the outdoor industries where I’ve usually found work have had to shut up shop and furlough staff.  I’ve signed up as a volunteer, but it has taken time for organisations to process the volume of applications they’ve received.

So, I’ve encountered an abundance of idle time in the last week or so.  It’s been an unexpected chance to indulge in the things that are usually side-lined for more pressing tasks.  For me, it’s reading for pleasure.  In the last week, I’ve been able to immerse myself in a few good books to help fend off the cabin fever.

While lockdown has clipped my wings, and travel is an impossibility right now, a book can take the mind flying anywhere beyond the immediate four walls.  Here’s what I’ve read, and my to-do list for the coming weeks.

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Armchair Travel: 10 Books on Mountains

I’ve compiled a list of my favourite books with a mountain setting, including accounts of expeditions, favourites from my childhood, biography, and nature writing. 

Welcome to the first edition of Armchair Travel for 2019, and a breath of pine-fresh, mountain air for the New Year.  The weather outside might be frightful, though not as bad as conditions in some of the books I’ve recommended, so in this post, I’m planning on making myself a massive mug of cocoa, wrapping up in a blanket, and vicariously scaling the heights in ten of my favourite books about mountains…

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