What can hiking tell you about the way the world works? How countries work, what their history is, the lives lived by their people, and what the future might hold? This video is the 5 minute introduction to my new channel, @TenWalksExplain, and it was shot mainly in Italy, in Liguria and Val D'Aosta - there are brief appearances from my wife and our two dogs, Rita the Rhodesian Ridgeback, and Baffo the Aussiedoodle. Apologies for any sound issues up in the Apennines, but a cold wind was blowing on some of those mountain ridges... (And the video settings seem a bit weird in Val D'Aosta. The thumbnail is not from Italy or the Netherlands, but was me walking in one of my favourite places on earth, Newton and Embleton beaches, with Dunstanburgh Castle in the distance, in gorgeous Northumberland (the far northeast corner of England).

Next up, I'll be publishing weekly videos of the walks that I did across the Netherlands for my new book 'Orange Sky, Rising Water'. The book uses ten walks in that fascinating country to explain its astonishing past, its present day, and its future. Subscribe to get them all as they come out!