Absolute Altitude : A Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Sky

In this exciting and unusual travel book, Martin Buckley journeys through many places, from Benbecula to Rarotonga, from Sudan to New Zealand, from Corsica to Tucson, Arizona – but the country he explores is a romantic and dangerous place that seduces all who travel there – the sky. Three years ago, Martin Buckley gained a pilot’s licence, and set off to ‘hitch-hike’ by plane around the world. His encounters with a range of sometimes eccentric and always obsessive pilots led to aid flights through war zones in a UN Cessna, aerobatics in a jet fighter, chasing goats across snowy mountains by helicopter and touching the edge of the stratosphere in a Learjet.

The result is a wholly original travel book, free-spirited and often very funny, weaving a bird’s-eye view of aviation’s peculiar history into the narrative and offering intimate insights into the passion and perils of the pilot’s seat.