If work weren’t taking me elsewhere, I know where I’d be going at the end of next week: to the Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland (Sept 23-Oct 2). Travel writing features prominently on a tremendous programme.

Speakers will include Alastair McIntosh, author of Poacher’s Pilgrimage, about a journey the length of Lewis and Harris; Cal Flyn, author of Thicker Than Water, the story of her ancestor, Angus McMillan, who was both a frontiersman in Australia and a killer of indigenous people; Jason Lewis, the first person to navigate the world by human power, who will be talking about To the Brink, the final part of his Expedition trilogy; Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, who in Cast Away tells the individual stories of refugees trying to start a new life in Europe; Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun, a memoir of Orkney that won this year’s Wainwright Prize; Rory Stewart, who in The Marches will tell about walking the land between Scotland and England with his father; Madeleine Bunting, whose Love of Country: A Hebridean Journey, is due out next month; Edward Wilson-Lee, author of Shakespeare in Swahililand; Mark Beaumont (The Man Who Cycled the World), talking about his latest book, Africa Solo, recounting his 41 days in the saddle from Cairo to Cape Town; and Malachy Tallack, who is following his critically acclaimed 60 Degrees North with The Un-Discovered Islands, about 24 islands once believed to be real but no longer on the map.