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  • The light blue cover of Wild Italy is illustrated with a view of the Sicilian coast.
  • A double-page spread of a snowy Alpine hiking trail in the Valle d’Aosta.
  • A photograph and map introduce the Gran Sasso and Apennine mountains.
  • A double-page spread from Wild Italy by Tim Jepson illustrates the Chianti hills and introduces the Bolgheri coast.
  • A double-page spread from Wild Italy by Tim Jepson introduces some of the wildest parts of Puglia.
    • “Readers of the second edition of Tim Jepson’s gem of a book will be… thanking the author for leading them away from the obvious in Italy – the cities and galleries, the beaches – and into the wild.”
      The Sunday Times
    • “Beautiful photographs and excellent maps… He encourages you to visit the wilderness of the Abruzzi or experience the excitement of Mount Etna.”
      The Independent on Sunday
    • “Compared to the other European countries, there are very few nature guides (especially in English) for Italy. This book is packed with information – an excellent book!”
      Andrew Hodgson, Amazon.co.uk

    Wild Italy

    A Traveller’s Guide

    £12.50

    Venture beyond the great Renaissance cities of Florence and Siena, drive a short distance from Milan, Venice, Rome or Naples, and you come to another Italy, by turns lush and verdant, rugged or parched, the countryside of ancient Rome, of Dante and St Francis of Assisi. Wild Italy will take you there.

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    Details
    • RRP: £12.50
    • Format: 210 mm x 149 mm (8 ¼ x 5 4/5 in)
    • Pages: 224
    • Weight: 0.4 kg (0.9 lb)
    • Pictures: 50 colour, 45 b/w
    • Maps: 8 colour, 18 b/w
    • Binding: Paperback
    • ISBN: 978 1 873329 35 1
    • Publication: 2005
    Description

    In Wild Italy, Tim Jepson leaves the well-worn tourist haunts of traditional guide books behind him in search of fresher pleasures. He offers a rural, rather than an urban Italy, revealing the best of the long walks, mountain hideaways, woods, plains, sea coasts and remote islands where travellers can still find a refuge from the modern world.

    He explores the whole country from its Alp-studded waist to its distant toe kicking the football of Sicily towards Africa. Like an unhurried lover, he works his way down thigh and shin, following the line of the Apennines, locating the pressure points between continental and peninsular Italy, pinching to see where the prosperous north gives way to the Mediterranean south, looking for those last empty stretches of littoral, down one side and up the other, where the bathers have yet to set up their parasols.

    Having lived in Rome and trekked the entire peninsula, Tim Jepson knows the secret places that are as oxygen to a suffocating man after the murderous drive through the suburbs of Milan or Naples. He has picked out the loveliest spots in Sicily and Sardinia and plotted the last few pinpricks of Italian territory, the scattered islands off the Tunisian coast which are some of the most isolated and primitive places in Europe. An extensive knowledge of, and deep passion for wild Italy are reflected in Jepson’s writing. ‘One view of a cypress tree or stone farm-house and we are entranced,’ he writes, ‘overcome by that longing for the warm south which Icelanders describe nicely as “the need for figs”.’

    Contents

    About the Series

    WILD ITALY: AN INTRODUCTION
    Map of Italy showing Chapter Areas

    THE KEY TO ITALY’S WILD PLACES
    Wild Habitats
    Protected Wild Places
    Exploring Wild Italy
    To the Reader

    CHAPTER 1: THE WESTERN ALPS AND ITALIAN RIVIERA
    Val Grande
    Alta Valsésia
    Gran Paradiso
    Gran Bosco di Salbertrand
    Orsiera-Rocciavrè
    Alpi Maríttime
    Monte di Portofino
    Cinque Terre

    CHAPTER 2: THE DOLOMITES AND CENTRAL ALPS
    Gruppo di Tessa
    Stélvio
    Adamello-Brenta
    Sciliar
    Panevéggio-Pale di San Martino
    Puéz-Odle
    Fánes-Sénnes-Bráies
    Dolomiti di Sesto

    CHAPTER 3: THE VENETIAN PLAIN AND EASTERN ALPS
    Monte Baldo
    Monti Lessini and Pasubio
    Dolomiti Bellunesi e Feltrine
    Bosco del Cansíglio
    Alpi Giulie-Cárniche
    Laguna di Cáorle
    Laguna di Marano and Laguna di Grado
    Carso

    CHAPTER 4: THE PO DELTA AND NORTHERN APENNINES
    Delta Padano
    Torrile
    Sassi di Rocca Malatina
    Abetone and Monte Cimone
    Foreste Casentinesi
    Monte Cónero
    Monti Sibillini
    Torricchio

    CHAPTER 5: TUSCANY AND UMBRIA
    Alpi Apuane
    Migliarino-San Rossore-Massaciúccoli
    Bólgheri
    Parco della Maremma
    Monte Argentario
    Arcipelago Toscano
    Monte Cucco
    Valnerina

    CHAPTER 6: ABRUZZO
    Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga
    Sirente-Velino
    Parco Nazionale d’Abruzzo
    Bosco di Sant’Antonio
    La Maiella
    Alta Molise

    CHAPTER 7: LAZIO AND CAMPANIA
    Lago di Vico and Monti Cimini
    Monti Simbruini and Monti Ernici
    Posta Fibreno, Circeo
    Monti Picentini
    Vesuvio
    Vallone delle Ferriere
    Oasi di Serre Persano
    Cilento

    CHAPTER 8: THE SOUTH OF ITALY
    Gargano and Foresta Umbra
    Isole Trémiti
    Saline di Margherita di Savóia
    Cesine
    Le Gravine Pugliesi
    Massiccio del Pollino and dell’Orsomarso
    Sila
    Aspromonte

    CHAPTER 9: SICILY
    Etna
    Monti Nébrodi
    Madoníe
    Zingaro and Monte Cofano
    Isola Maréttimo
    Isola di Pantelleria
    Isole Pelágie

    SARDINIA
    Monti del Gennargentu
    Giara di Gésturi
    Monlentargius
    Monte Arcosu
    Sínis
    Isola di Asinara
    Monte Limbara

    Glossary

    Useful Addresses

    Index

    Author

    Tim Jepson was educated at Oxford where he studied English Literature. He is the author of six books about Italy and has a particular interest in Tuscany and Umbria. He lived in Italy for five years and wrote for The Sunday Telegraph as their Rome-Italy correspondent. He has covered other areas of the world in Train Journeys of the World, Mediterranean Wildlife and the Rough Guides to Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

    Preview

    TUSCANY AND UMBRIA
    For many people, Tuscany is Italy. One view of a cypress tree, vineyard or stone farm-house and we are entranced, overcome by that longing for the warm south which the Icelanders describe nicely as the ‘need for figs’. Countryside here has a purity that to northern eyes is simply irresistible: enticing forests, sleepy villages, gentle hills, olive groves, winding lanes, terraced slopes, geraniums, orange-tiled roofs, all over-arched by the translucent pearly skies of a thousand Renaissance paintings.

    Tuscany is a huge region, however, and far more complex than its beguiling pastoral image would suggest. The arc of the northern Apennines marks its borders to north and east, curving in an embrace around the great Renaissance cities of Florence and Sienna. Within this broad sweep lie all manner of intriguing landscapes. From the high country of the Garfagnana, Mugello and Casentino in the east the wild traveller’s interest sifts westward, skipping over Tuscan heartland – the Chianti hills, the tourist-filled cities, the Sienese badlands – to the Apuan Alps, jagged, marble-veined mountains that belie any notion of soft-centred pastoralism.

    ETNA
    Ancient Navigators believed Etna to be the highest point on earth. The Arabs called it Jebel, from which derives its alternative name, Mongibello, the ‘mountain of mountains’. Pindar described it as the column that supports the sky. Sicilians call it simply ‘the mountain’. One of the greatest volcanoes in the world – 3,350 metres (10,990 feet) high and over 250 kilometres (150 miles) in circumference – it is probably the single most monumental land-form in the Mediterranean.

    For all its majesty, it is a remarkably young volcano, perhaps only 60,000 years old, and it has some unusual characteristics. Here, in a rare configuration, magma wells up directly from the bowels of the earth, funnelled through a central crater which plunges 50 kilometres (30 miles), direct to the level at which continents drift.