When you think of the world today you always assume that we have discovered everything, each piece of land is owned and there aren’t any unknowns left for us to discover. What this book shows us is that those thoughts are wrong, whether it is a strip of land between buildings, floating pumice islands, no-mans land or an abandoned gun platform out in the sea, there are still many remarkable places for us to discover and explore.

I found the psychology of what a place means to us the most interesting part of this book, Bonnett would start talking about a type of place, strips of unused land between building in cities for example, I would instantly think you can’t include that in the list but each time he convinced me that it deserved to be included. Once you start using you imagination these sorts of places really come alive with potential, imagine what you could witness happening around you whilst the world moves on….hmmm starting to sound like a peeping tom now. My favourite weird place in the book was a sandy island that had always been included on maps but when somebody went looking for it there was nothing there, google maps did the only logical thing and did an awful photoshop jobbie of removing the island from existence, look it up, hilarious.

There was only one location included that I had heard of before, Sealand, an incredible story of a breakaway English nation living on an abandoned platform at see, the self proclaimed king stood his ground against English law and foreign invaders. Each time I read of Sealand in a book I always end going off on a google adventure reading up on the tiny nation.

I have to admit that I found this book rather frustrating, it is jammed packed with so many interesting and strange places but Bonnett seems to get bored quickly and rushes onto the next location, I would have loved some photos, or interviews of the locals, or just more info about the place to answer all the many questions I had, for a while I did spend time on google but gave up as I was spending more time looking at the screen and not at the book.

I did enjoy the book but it would have been far better with less places included and more time spent on those that did make the cut.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/07/03/off-the-map-by-alastair-bonnett/