This year’s Festival, which runs from 2-14 May, will have more than 65 events, including 15 in schools, featuring international writers and speakers covering a wide range of fascinating subjects. The first week features local writers and this year’s Festival’s has its biggest ever community programme, taking writers into the prison and care homes. Events will be held in a number of local venues, including St James, Les Cotils, the Guille Alles Library, the OGH and St Pierre Park Hotel. Blissfully funny, staggeringly informative, a joyful companion' Caroline Quentin'Tells the endlessly fascinating tale of Britain's natural history in a way that makes every delicate detail sparkle with life' Charlie Corbett, author of 12 Birds to Save Your LifeWhen we go for a walk, whether in the countryside or city, we pass through landscapes full of natural beauty and curiosities both visible and invisible - but though we might admire the view, or wonder idly about the name of a flower, we rarely have the knowledge to fully engage with what we see.

The quantified-self enthusiast Matt Manhattan has made an inventory of every single thing he owns. He claims this made him a “more thoughtful and considered consumer.” PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Observant_Walker_-_John_Wright.pdf, The_Observant_Walker_-_John_Wright.epub

Road Directions

Inspirational speaker Mim Skinner’s journey into alternative societies led to her book Living Together – Searching for Community in a Fractured World will be the subject of her talk, and activist Kim Samuel looks at the importance of connectedness in her book On Belonging – Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation. Modern airline transport grapples, successfully, with a different set of safety issues. For general aviation, the lessons about weather and mountains are ongoing – and not always heeded. There’s even less excuse for flying into terrain in the 21st century. Modern general aviation pilots have electronic flight bags, which would have seemed utterly miraculous in 1931. Yet CFIT crashes persist. ‘The pilot, who was qualified only to operate in visual meteorological conditions, flew toward and entered an area of low cloud and reduced visibility,’ the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said about the fatal crash of a Cessna 182 in April 2019. In September that year five people died when a Bell UH-1D Huey was flown into low visibility conditions. The Southern Cloud was one of five Avro Ten aircraft operated by Australian National Airways, the airline founded by pioneering aviators Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm. The Avro Ten was a British-made licensed version of the Fokker FVII.3m that Kingsford Smith and Ulm had flown across the Pacific Ocean in 1928. On 21 March 1931 it took off from Mascot Aerodrome for the daily service to Melbourne. It was heard over Goulburn in NSW, but never definitively seen again.

John Wright is a naturalist and one of Great Britain's leading experts on fungi. His most recent books include A Spotter's Guide to the Countryside and The Forager's Calendar. He lives in Dorset, where he regularly leads forays into nature and goes on long walks across all terrains. The Forager's Calendar won the 2020 Guild of Food Writers Award and the 2020 Woodland Book of the Year.In 1971, 40 years after the crash, Job editorialised in Aviation Safety Digest about how pilots were still having CFIT crashes. ‘All too many general aviation pilots are apparently willing to “give it a go” even when indications are all against safe completion of a flight,’ Job thundered. John Wright is the country’s foremost expert in foraging and brings decades of experience, including as forager at the River Cottage. He is the author of the River Cottage Handbooks Mushrooms, Edible Seashore and Hedgerow. His most recent books include The Forager’s Calendar, and The Spotter’s Guide to the Countryside. We look forward to welcoming him to Oswestry! Laura Kennington is a British adventure athlete, author and speaker with a passion for the endurance capability of the human body talks about her adventures. Her book Kairos includes her adventures in Guernsey and features its wonderful open water swimming community.