We're delighted to welcome Wild Frontiers, the recipient of the Best Ethical Travel Company accolade at the 2012 Guardian Observer Annual Travel Awards, to our flagship Covent Garden store's themed area for the duration of October.

The independent travel company, which specialises in tailor-made holidays to countries including India, Burma and Ethiopia, will offer Stanfords' visitors bespoke travel advice and host in-store talks from destination experts until 31st October.

To celebrate the partnership, we've joined forces to More...

Images Copyright Ben Wakefield

Stanfords has teamed up with Wilderness Lectures to bring travellers and explorers to venues in Bristol.

The Wilderness Lectures are a winter series of public talks in Bristol; the theme of which is worldwide adventure. The lecturers are well-known explorers, mountaineers, travel writers, TV and adventure sports personalities or anyone who has an epic story to tell and can entertain the audience with a good story. The talks usually include slides and/or film.

Wilderness Lectures tickets are available on the Stanfords website (up to 72 hours before each event) and in-store from the Bristol store, but regrettably not by phone. See the programme guide below for further details. More...

Fancy spending a month on a Costa Rican beach; six months of diving in the Philippines; two weeks camping out in a jungle; or a year getting to know life in a rural Indian village..? Volunteering can open up all sorts of amazing opportunities that you might not normally come across, and you get to stay somewhere fantastic for a longer period of time – making your holiday spending stretch further.

Volunteering is not just the domain of 18-year-old gappers – anyone up to the age of 75 can participate, and with placements lasting from two weeks to a year, or even more, you can go on a placement on your annual holiday or on a career break. Volunteer work brings all sorts of benefits, not only to the community or environment you’re working in, but to you, too. You could choose to work on a placement that utilises your skills or interests More...

Two students approached Stanfords for help with an intrepid journey overland from the UK to Mongolia – by ambulance. How could we refuse?

Charlie Hogg and Matthew Burgum, both 21, will drive unaided on the 10,000 miles from England to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, where they will donate the ex-NHS ambulance, plus some much-needed medical supplies, to a hospital. More...

Squirrels had been harvesting the green hazelnuts along Woodlands Lane; the split shells went crunching under our boots as we set out from Berwick St John on a cloudy morning. Beyond the gabled old house of Woodlands there was a bit of a pull up the breast of the hill, and then the exhilaration of a good old step-out along one of the ancient ridgeways that ride the nape of these south Wiltshire downs. Jane, a South Downs girl born and bred, strode out with a big smile on her face, delighting in the poppies along the cornfield headlands, the nodding harebells and powder-blue buttons of scabious in the trackway verges, and the sense of being high up among the swooping hills of proper chalk-and-flint country.

Steep hill slopes whose sheep-nibbled turf had never been disturbed by any plough plunged away to flat and sinuous valley bottoms, where the pale coffee colour of the newly harrowed earth lay streaked with darker chocolate, sign of watercourses still active under the soil. More...

Stanfords have teamed up with Wilderness Lectures who bring travellers and explorers to venues in Bristol.

The Wilderness Lectures are a winter series of public lectures in Bristol, the theme of which is worldwide adventure. The lecturers are well-known explorers, mountaineers, travel writers, TV and adventure sports personalities or anyone who has an epic story to tell and can entertain the audience with a good story. The talks themselves usually including slides and/or film.

The tickets for this season of Wilderness Lectures are available on the Stanfords’ website and from our Bristol store. (up to 72 hours before each event) - see the programme guide below.

Wilderness Lectures Guide Winter 2011-12
Season tickets are no longer available. More...

The Uruguayan ambassador hosted a prestigious event at Stanfords last week for the launch of the first English-language guidebook to Uruguay.

The guidebook’s author, Tim Burford, spoke to the crowd of exclusive guests about writing the first guidebook dedicated solely to this often overlooked country. The book is published by Bradt, a company renowned for covering parts of the world other travel publishers don’t reach. Mr Burford has written nine books for Bradt, specialising in backpacking and ecotourism in Latin America.

The evening continued with national delicacies and wine served to the sound of Uruguayan tangos, and the country’s ambassador, H.E. Sr. Julio Moreira-Morán, gave a speech. More...

To celebrate Bristol Zoo's 175th year, Stanfords is proud to be part of the Gorilla Trail this summer and the keeper of Crystal Eyes whose unique feature is his ability to 'glow in the dark'.

Come and be photographed alongside this handsome beast and pick up our own customised Gorilla Trail Memento Map, or perhaps a miniature hand-painted ceramic gorilla as a reminder of this wonderful event.

This world class event will showcase decorated life-size gorillas all around the city of Bristol, till the 7th of September 2011.

This event is to help raise awareness and enlighten all, of the plight of apes in the wild and raise significant funds to support gorilla conservation project. For more information about Bristol Zoo’s Wow! Gorilla project, please visit www.wowgorilla.org.uk. More...

A nurse from North Yorkshire has taken up the challenge of walking 2000 miles across Western Europe for charity, using maps supplied by Stanfords. Andy Dennis, a staff nurse on the Intensive Care Unit at Harrogate District Hospital, will be walking from A to B - from Amsterdam to Barcelona - to raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF – or Doctors Without Borders – is an international humanitarian medical aid organisation that provides care to those affected by conflict, epidemics and natural disasters in over 60 countries around the world. Andy has previously worked for the charity on projects with displaced people in Uganda and Sudan.

So far, intrepid Andy has raised over £13,000 through talent contests, concerts, radio interviews and burlesque nights. He aims to bring this amount up to £16,800 with donations and further fundraising events. This money will then be used directly to fund two crucially important MSF volunteer placements abroad. Passionate about the vital work that the organisation does, Andy says: “I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to work with MSF and I now wish to help provide this opportunity for others.” More...

A dawn start on West Anstey Common, watching a magnificent red deer stag roaring rivals away from his harem of hinds. How to follow that? A pint and a sandwich at Tarr Farm Inn didn’t hurt at all, and we strode out across Tarr Steps among the gold and green oaks of the Barle Valley just as if the western sky were not heaping with ominously slaty clouds.

No-one really knows how long the ancient clapper bridge of Tarr Steps has spanned the nut-brown River Barle in its narrow combe. Saurian in shape, resistant to flood waters yet built to allow them free passage, this subtle old bridge might have been placed across the river by medieval monks, or it could have been carrying travellers dry-shod over the Barle for as long as 3,000 years. Its flagstone decking rang underfoot, and the swollen river rushed through the rough piers in curling trails of bubbles.

High above the valley an enthusiastic dog came to meet us More...