Near motorway junctions – The Extra Mile

Best seller image, (c) ibreakstock Adobe Stock 139558768

Bestselling travel guides 2024

We are Printslinger (like mud slinger, only slinging print about the place instead of mud). Home of three best-selling travel guidebooks and counting, we’re not as well known as Lonely Planet and the like. Our foodie travel books have excelled themselves in 2024 however, often beating the ‘big-hitters’ to the top spot when it comes to online book sales. Not bad for a small, independent publisher without the marketing might of the mass publishers. Long live independents!

At Printslinger, we’re driven by a desire to help you avoid boring, big-brand food and motorway services chains. We exist to help you seek out, support, and celebrate British food and Britain’s local food growers and retailers, Britain’s farmers, and independent farm shops, cafés, restaurants, coffee shops, and more. Let’s have a look at what each of our books has been up to in 2024.

The Extra Mile: a 2024 travel guide bestseller

The Extra Mile: Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services is our flagship title. It was produced annually in 2017, 2018, and 2019. It then had a three-year holiday (and a change of hands, into our hands), and returned with a bang in 2023.

The Extra Mile (ed. 4, 2023), has 275 off-motorway places to eat near motorway junctions. It was an Amazon #1 Bestseller across several food and travel guide categories in 2023 and 2024, and is frequently on the #1 Most Gifted charts. Its return to prominence in 2024 was aided by our publisher Kerry’s appearance on BBC Breakfast in August, discussing how our books help readers find and buy local food from independent cafés and farm shops near them and while on journeys around Britain.

“Is BBC Breakfast a radio show?” asked Kerry. “No, it’s primetime morning TV with an audience of 7m people,” we said. “I’ll wash my hair.”

The Coastal Café Guide: a #1 bestselling food guide in 2024

The Coastal Café Guide was released by Printslinger in July 2024. It is packed with 150 of Britain’s best coastal cafés and places to eat, like restaurants with sea views, top spots for coffee after a surf or a wild swim, and idyllic cafés to visit while walking the coast path. The Coastal Café Guide became an #1 Amazon Hot New Release and #1 Bestseller across several foodie travel guide categories. It is a great gift for people who love the sea, seafood, sea views, and culinary adventures on the coast. It was featured in The Scotsman with a long article, had a double-page feature in The Times Weekend, and was reviewed (favourably!) in The Sun, as well as getting coverage in many local and regional outlets.

Printslinger makes a donation of 1% of book sales to Surfers Against Sewage for every book we sell, managed through the Work for Good platform.

The Farm Shop Guide: a #1 bestselling food and travel guide in 2024

The Farm Shop Guide is the third title from Printslinger to date. It has 165 fantastic farm shops and farm shop cafés and restaurants, alongside info on farmers’ markets, food festivals, and the best PYO places for pick-your-own fruit, vegetables, flowers, pumpkins, and even Christmas trees across Britain. The Farm Shop Guide had a 2.5 page feature in The Times Weekend, a double-page spread in Waitrose Weekend, a review in The Telegraph’s ‘what’s new in food’, mentions in other outlets including Cotswold Life, and a good plug on TV’s BBC Breakfast.

Printslinger makes a donation of 1% of book sales to the Sustainable Food Trust for every book we sell, managed through the Work for Good platform.

Find out more about Printslinger and our best-selling food and travel guides

Printslinger is run by Kerry O’Neill and Laura Collacott. More titles are in the pipeline, with themes broadening out from pure food and travel guides into other realms. Rest assured, they will remain independent books, about memorable places and independent businesses, created by and for independent-minded people. To browse and buy our books, visit our online bookshop (link below). To discuss stocking our current books, marketing partnerships, press, work, your own book ideas, or anything else of interest, please use our contact form, linked to below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Finally, a big thank you from us all to everyone who’s bought and enjoyed our books, shared our books and given them as presents, featured our books in their print and online coverage, actually BEEN in our books, and worked with us. We wouldn’t be where we are today without you. Thank you!

The ultimate guidebook trio for foodies

If you’re getting ‘gift-giving anxiety’ about what to buy the discerning, book-loving foodie in your life, look no further than this unique foodie present. Our trio of foodie travel guides covers off-motorway cafés, farm shops, and cafés at the coast, with a total of around 600 memorable places top stop. This makes it the ideal gift for road-trip lovers seeking something different, or those seeking dog-friendly and family-friendly cafés and farm shops while on the road. Not only that, they’ll help you avoid motorway services and boring, big-brand food chains, helping you find, support, and enjoy Britain’s wealth of smaller, independent, local food and drinks businesses instead.

Our three British travel guides for foodies are outlined below. Order today and in a few short days, you could be planning your next road trip avoiding the motorway services, sea-view seafood stop-off, or family-friendly farm-shop experience. Low-food-miles and more ethically minded eateries, here you come. And what’s even better? Buy the trio (which we’re dubbing ‘Surf, Turf, and Tarmac’) and you’ll get the three for cheaper even than Amazon – while supporting a small, independent publisher while you’re at it. Win, win, and thrice win!

The Extra Mile Guide: an Amazon #1 travel bestseller in 2023 and 2024

The Extra Mile: Delicious Alternatives to Motorway Services (4th edition.) is packed with independent cafés. It was one of 2023 and indeed 2024’s best-selling and ‘Most Gifted’ travel guides online, and it featured on BBC Breakfast TV, many BBC Radio channels, and elsewhere in print and online. It’s packed with over 275 delicious places to stop and eat just off junctions and near motorway and A-road junctions, to help you avoid motorway services and avoid chain food and find instead the best food stops on your British road trips. Use the foodie guidebook’s handy maps to find local farm shops near you, cosy cafés near motorway junctions, dog-friendly pubs or unusual places to eat just off junctions, while supporting the local, independent food businesses along your route. Covering areas just off motorway and main road junctions in mainland England, Scotland and Wales, it features:

Over 275 places to eat and drink with times, descriptions, images, contact details
11 motorway-based maps to help you find places to eat just off motorways and junctions
Map showing cafés with EV chargers and restaurants with EV chargers

The Coastal Café Guide: a 2024 Amazon #1 Hot New Release

The Coastal Café Guide is the ideal travel and café guide for anyone who loves food, loves the coast, and wants to find cafés on the coast, coffee at the beach, and seafood near the sea! An Amazon No #1 Hot New Release in July 2024, it’s also been featured in The Times Weekend, The Sun, and The Scotsman. It’s the perfect gift for beach lovers, coast-path walkers, surfers, paddle-boarders, seafood fans, water sports enthusiasts, holidaymakers, and those travelling with families and dogs. It’s perfect to help wild swimmers find a post-swim coffee by the sea, too. Inside The Coastal Café Guide, find:

150 cafés, restaurants, beach bars, seafood cabins, and pubs at the coast
Dog-friendly and family-friendly places to eat at the coast, often with a sea view
10 striking regional maps to help you find a café on the coast near you
Independent, smaller cafés and places to eat on the coast
Features on a dozen marine- and coast-relevant charities including (and with a donation per book to) Surfers Against Sewage
Places in England, Scotland and Wales (inc. Isles of Scilly, Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, Isle of Skye)

The Coastal Café Guide also features 12 coastal charities, including the RNLI, the Ramblers, The Marine Conservation Society (MCS), The Marine Stewardship Council (MCS), the Open Seas charity, The John Muir Trust, The Wave Project, the National Trust for Scotland, City to Sea, The Outdoor Swimming Society, and The South West Coast Path Organisation. Not only will you be supporting local food businesses and local communities, you’ll be helping raise the profile (and raising money) for some tireless UK-based charities.

The Farm Shop Guide: as seen in The Times and Waitrose Weekend

This is the ideal food, travel, and farm shop and farm café guide and directory for anyone who loves fresh food, farm-to-fork experiences, and farm-focused events and activities. It became an Amazon #1 bestseller following some fab coverage in The Times Weekend, Waitrose Weekend, The Scotsman, Cotswold Life, and more. If you love farm-fresh food and local flavours and are keen to locate a farm shop, to shop seasonally and avoid flown-in food (while supporting Britain’s farmers and growers), this is the book for you. The Farm Shop Guide will help you find farm-fresh food and independent farm shops and cafés across Britain: perfect places for a weekly shop, an eat-out treat, or a family-friendly or dog-friendly day trip to a farm. In the book you’ll find:

First-rate farm shops, farm shop cafés, and farm restaurants
Farmers’ markets and food festivals
Dog-friendly and family-friendly places to stop, eat and shop
Farm shops with EV chargers for your vehicles
Farms and farm shops offering PYO (pick-your-own) fruit, veg, flowers, Christmas trees, and pumpkin places
Striking full-colour maps and full-page features per farm shop
Spotlights on food, farming, and environmental charities including: Pasture for Life, the Sustainable Food Trust, Buglife, RSPB Fair to Nature, the Permaculture Association, Community Supported Agriculture, and the Soil Association.

For local farm shops, farmers markets, this farm shop directory has all the information you need on Britain’s best farm shops, organic farm shops, artisan food shops, and family-friendly farm experiences.

Buy the ultimate trio of foodie guidebooks today for just £42

If it’s a foodie gift or foodie book you seek, our guidebooks really will put a smile on the most discerning food lover’s face…treat yourself and they’ll have the same effect.

The three guides (either alone or together) make great gifts for gourmets, and those who love to avoid motorway services and big-brand chain food because they prefer farm shops, fresh food, local food, or perhaps food with a view. Our foodie travel guides also make great artisan food gifts for chefs, cooks, and Masterchef fans, who like to go the extra mile themselves when it comes to eating out, entertaining, and cooking.

Support local, smaller food growers, producers and businesses, and easily locate independent cafés and farm shops near you and at the coast, wherever you live and wherever you travel around Britain.

Category: Near motorway junctions

BEST-SELLING FOODIE TRAVEL GUIDES