7.30 pm Friday June 6th 2025

Simon, one of the great cyclist-adventurers, makes a much-anticipated return after first appearing to talk about his book, Riding Out, in which chronicled his mammoth journey round Britain. On this occasion, Simon will be expanding on his latest book, A Ride Across America - in which he chronicles his 4,300-mile journey across the United States

Simon's impetus was his frustration at the shallow headlines focusing only on Donald Trump, guns and divisions - and he decided that to better understand the USA he would have to travel across it, slowly. He wondered - did the America of his teenage dreams really exist? And was it really as fractured as the headlines suggested?

On his journey of discovery, Simon cycled through eleven states and numerous extreme weather events, via mountains and prairie lands, forests and freeways. Along the way he visited homes, schools, churches and rodeos, meeting hundreds of extraordinary Americans to discover a nation whose portrayal has become vastly oversimplified. In the lead-up to the 2024 US Presidential Election – arguably the most divisive in the country’s history – Simon met hundreds of ordinary Americans - the "Middle Americans" often overlooked by the media.

Some suggest it would be easy to mistake Simon as belonging to that peloton of travel writers for whom clocking up maximum miles is all that matters - but there is so much more to his skills. Riding Out charted his 3,427 mile cycle ride around Britain in 2020, while - for a BBC World Service radio documentary about human endurance - he sailed and cycled half-way around the world, covering 15,000 miles from China to London. His website testifies to numerous other intrepid and often physically gruelling adventures that have taken him to 120 countries over the past decade alone.

Simon says he's not remotely interested in bicycles except as a way of helping his writing. On a previous adventure in America in 2016, he realised that having a bicycle, heavily loaded with bags, was an incredible icebreaker for developing conversations with complete strangers. "When you’re cycling along and you haven’t showered for three days, and you’ve got a British accent, people naturally start talking to you.”

The BBC's Justin Webb wrote about A Ride Across America: "From overheated bras to over doctored coffee, America's charming oddness summed up in a blast of entertainment and information. A wonderful companion to America - thoughtful, fun and always willing to be surprised by a nation of dizzying complexity". The Guardian's reviewer said: "Parker magnificently chronicles the America he encounters - a divided, disfranchised collection of states he fears for - but comes to love for their generosity, community spirit and sense of hope"

If you are interested in attending this talk or would like to reserve a ticket please Contact us

(Children over 16 welcome) Entry is £10 in cash and includes free food, featuring delicious sandwiches and sumptuous rocky-roads., with wine and soft drinks available for a modest donation

7.30 pm Friday July 4th 2025

Tim is one of the world's leading ornithologists, an emeritus professor at Sheffield University and a member of the Royal Society - and makes a much-anticipated return to Wootton.

Tim is committed to the public understanding of science and has written several best-seller books, including The Wisdom of Birds, Bird Sense, The Most Perfect Thing: the Inside (and Outside) of a Bird's Egg, What it’s Like to be a Bird and Birds and Us.

For his appearance in Wootton, Tim will be talking about his latest book on the demise of the great auk - which remains a symbol of human folly and the necessity of conservation

The great auk was a flightless, goose-sized bird superbly adapted for life at sea. Fat, flush with feathers and easy to capture, the birds were in trouble whenever sailors visited their once-remote breeding colonies. Places like Funk Island, off north-east Newfoundland, became scenes of unimaginable slaughter, with birds killed in their millions and, by 1800, the auks of Funk Island were gone Extinct since 1844, Tim says the great auk’s afterlife has been extraordinary and continues to be extraordinary. With so much written about this iconic bird, it is hard to imagine that anything new could be discovered about its life - but that is exactly what has happened. Great auk relics - 75 eggs, 78 stuffed birds and several skeletons - continue to yield new wonders about a bird that was never seen alive by any ornithologist.

Tim's book, The Great Auk, provides an outline of the bird's life, and how it became extinct. Its afterlife focuses on the way its relics have been used to fill in some of the many gaps in our knowledge of how this remarkable bird lived. But those relics are tainted with pathological obsession, money and skulduggery.Thirteen great auk eggs — each worth £100,000 — disappeared in the 1960s, and which, after thirty years of investigation, Tim finally found. This investigation is the book's story

One reviewer of The Great Auk said: "Tim Birkhead is a scientist by training, but he approaches his subject as if he were an investigative reporter and writes as if he were Agatha Christie"

For over 50 years, Tim has been monitoring the thousands of guillemots on the island of Skomer, off the Welsh coast and his life’s work offers an unrivalled insight into seabirds in an era of climate breakdown and also reveals the unexpectedly colourful lifestyles of these gregarious birds.

Here's a link to a film about his work on Skomer The Birdman Of Skomer

If you are interested in attending this talk or would like to reserve a ticket please Contact us

(Children over 16 welcome) Entry is £10 in cash and includes free food, featuring delicious sandwiches and sumptuous rocky-roads., with wine and soft drinks available for a modest donation