The next best thing to going somwhere is hearing all about it from someone who has just been.

Whether it’s a cautionary tale, a romantic comedy or a simple fact box, I crave other people’s stories, photos and itineraries.

And when people get sick of my incessant questions and avoid me in the street? I get my dirty mitts on a travel  story, the latest of which is the Best of Lonely Planet Travel Writing.

I love this book. My genius of a best friend bought it for me for Christmas and I have been doling out daily doses like a junkie at a methodone clinic (it’s the closest I am going to get to the real thing for a while).

I finished it this weekend meaning that this excellent book is now available for loan – hands up who wants it next?

Featuring essays by Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler alongside Simon Winchester, Tim Cahill and Jan Morris, just to name a few, these stories will take you to a Mayan village in Mexico, a perilous mountain pass in Afghanistan, Prague (several times actually), the outer provinces of China, a white beach in the Ascension Islands and everywhere in between.

Your travelling companions? Some of the sharpest observational writers I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

I was left with a feeling of total longing after reading some of these stories; flat-out pity after reading others. The main thing I felt? Escape … and isn’t that what travel is all about?

What is your favourite travel story, fictional of factual? Do tell …