Wild Not To Say Shattering

Congratulations to Neville Denson from St Bees in Cumbria, who has won the Wildest Travel Story Competition with his account of a wild, not to say shattering experience in the USA. He receives a copy of Tim Jepson’s Wild Italy: A Traveller’s Guide.

Neville Denson’s wildest travel story is entitled USA – An Earth-Shattering Experience and you can read it here.

His story was placed first by both judges. ‘I’d say USA is the winner, because he’s taken the trouble to craft it. Could be Letter of the Week in a travel section,’ said Fergus Fleming. ‘This truly would be a memorable experience,’ said Gavin Thurston. ‘Having also experienced an earthquake, though not of that magnitude, I can relate to the confusion. Even though this happened back in 1989, Neville clearly has the image of the experience engraved in his memory.’

We also received wild travel stories from Miles Ellingham (an extract from his Moscow Diaries, enlivened with Czech beer and esoteric chasers), Tony Burgess (a Welsh rugby outing to Dublin enlivened with – you guessed it) and Patrick Skinner (a culinary shock in Beirut).

The judges were Fergus Fleming, nephew of Ian Fleming and author of Killing Dragons: The Conquest of the Alps, which was serialized for BBC Radio Four, and Gavin Thurston, author of Journeys in the Wild: The Secret Life of a Cameraman, published this August.

Although Neville Denson and his wife have been back to the USA many times since their wild not to say shattering experience, and have family in Montana, they have never returned to California. ‘My wife continues to have nervous feelings about it.’