The Hay Festival and the National Trust have announced the winners of the Outdoors Books of the Year poll to find the best recent writing about the outdoors.

Members of the public were asked to nominate their favourite book, published for the first time since 2010, which celebrates in some way the joys of the outdoors.

Titles ranged from fact and fiction to prose and poetry, across a wide variety of themes, from gardening and wildlife to extreme sports and travel.

Hundreds of votes were received via the National Trust’s website, which ran the poll between 15 April and 20 May.

And our very own Mission:Explore was among the winners. You can visit here to order copies on a special offer. Our congratulations to all the other winners.

And you can go here to read the Press Release from the National Trust.

Hello! We had a great day on the Southbank in London launching Mission:Explore balloons. (PLEASE NOTE our balloons and tags are all biodegradable – breaking down as quickly as oak leaves).

This is where we’ll be mapping all the discovered balloons.

If you’ve found a balloon, let us know:

where you found it, and when and what number is on the tag.

Let us know your contact details as well (we promise not to sell it or spam you!) and we’ll add it to the map. If your balloon wins one of the prizes, we’ll send you some delightful goodies. Send these details over to us at explore at canofwormsenterprises dot co dot uk.

While you’re here, it would be terribly rude not to introduce ourselves. We’re the publishers of Mission: Explore, a series of books that National Geographic called “bold, cool, exciting …and just plain fun!”. The aim of the books to to get children exploring our world and seeing it in a different way. The authors, The Geography Collective, have a brilliant website where you can find exciting missions all over the UK – there’s even an iPhone app! Check it out here.

You can buy any of the books at a special discounted rate using the button below:

Victoria Riches and Sue Riches embark on a life-changing journey to the North Pole as part of the first all-female expedition. Frigid Women is the inspiring true story of this mother and daughter team on the quest to find spiritual healing and self-belief. Dangerous, exciting and humorous at times, their story is about the positive attitudes that can transform even the most difficult tasks into one of life’s most rewarding experiences.

Despite her own private fears, Nicola Naylor set out to experience the India she had always imagined but never seen due to a congenital disorder that struck her blind. She leaves the comforts of familiarity and travels alone to India to study aromatherapy techniques she could apply in healing others. In this highly personal account, Naylor found a renewed trust in the world and rediscovered her own self-belief.

This provocative work reveals how our irrational and unexamined fear of death has been manipulated throughout history. This has resulted in the misdirection of our energies-away from real challenges and toward unnecessary ones. In this philosophical letter addressed to the whole of humanity, Death challenges even the most open-minded reader to examine the basis of their beliefs about life, death and human nature.