That man with the umbrella is on his travels again - this time recreating famous trips around the British Isles. Nick Crane talks to Steve Pratt about his love of the landscape and being a reluctant TV star

As geographer and writer Nick Crane prepares to take viewers on a series of TV journeys across the country, his own family holiday isn't going quite to plan. He's on his first proper trip away from work for 18 months, messing about on the river in small boats. But the same meticulous planning that went into his Great British Journeys TV series doesn't seem to have been applied to his own holiday.

A voice can be heard in the background during our phone chat. "I'm being told off by my daughter for having left the entire food rations in the fridge," he explains.

The Cranes are being forced to dine on dehydrated food. In addition, he's having to take time out to do press interviews for the BBC2 series. He'd planned to be back at his desk by the time publicity needed to be done, but that plan was scuppered when the transmission date was brought forward.

Crane is the chap with the umbrella who first came to our notice as Map Man and in BBC2's Coast series. Now he's embarking on eight Great British Journeys, travelling by foot, horse and bicycle to follow the routes of eight of our greatest indigenous explorers.

He laughs when the brolly is mentioned. It's the equivalent of a catchphrase for him. "It became a menace now and again, but it does sometimes rain in Britain," he points out.

The travellers featured in the series are a mix of the known and unknown. They include Gerald of Wales, who undertook the first natural history journey through his homeland to recruit Welshmen for the crusades.

Crane recreates Daniel Defoe's gallop across the lowlands of East Anglia and Celia Fiennes' journey on her horse from London to the Scottish border. He looks for evidence today of the countryside described by champion of radicalism, William Cobbett, in his Rural Rides, elegies to rustic southern England written between 1822-26. He makes his own journey in a Bullnose Morris like H V Morton, who published the first travel book about touring Britain in a motor car in 1933.

The idea for the series came from Crane. "I'm very keen both to celebrate the British Isles and encourage people to go out and learn what we've got," he explains.

"It's changing very fast indeed and is set to change over the next 50 years faster than it has ever done. We mustn't take the British landscape for granted."

The landscape is covered at present with TV people making series about the countryside, but Crane believes his offers a fresh perspective. "I'd argue this is a very new idea and a big departure from Coast or nature programmes," he says.

"I don't think anyone has done it before. To discover Britain we have to find out who explored where we live. We talk about Columbus discovering America, but never seem to ask who discovered Britain.

"The answer is very obvious -- every continent is discovered by its own indigenous population. So Columbus didn't discover America, its indigenous people did. The same with this country.

"You have to find individuals who can be said to be great discoverers of Europe's biggest island, and surviving accounts that give you enough material for one-hour films."

He was more familiar with some than others, through his previous writing, of the eight finally chosen. "With a film production there's a fair amount of argy-bargy and pooling of ideas. Of the final eight, some were from my original list and some came from other people," he says.

He could have undertaken more journeys - his list runs to 20 or more - but eight was the number of episodes the BBC required. "It's all, how long is a piece of string? There are relatively few accounts between the 12th and 17th centuries, so for the first four programmes it's difficult to find travellers who define their era very succinctly or genuinely.

"Once you get into the late 1700s and onwards, there's a lot more competition for places. The four we chose gave us a geographical spread," he says.

Not wishing to fool anyone - a matter of great concern to TV companies these days - he points out that he didn't undertake the continuous journey of each traveller. They were done in bits and pieces.

Each episode required six weeks of preparation and research before filming. "I go with an assistant producer and research the region and plan the narrative and locations," he says.

"The title Great British Journeys isn't the journeys I'm making, it refers to the journeys not me. The reason for me being seen wearing a rucksack or on a bike is I'd like people to go out and enjoy the countryside like I do. All you need is waterproofs and a map."

And, in Crane's case, an umbrella. The same one did the entire series, although it did need repairing along the way.

He relates that his entry into TV was a "total accident". He'd had success as a writer, including books about his 18-month solo journey walking from Finisterre to Istanbul, and walking across Britain in a straight line. Then, writing the biography of Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator changed it all.

"The book took three years of research and was a fairly intense occupation. It wasn't really a commercial book, although it did rather well and people got excited about maps, including the BBC."

The result was a BBC2 series called Map Man, the title of which became applied to him. He studied geography at university, drawn to a subject embracing everything from town planning to climate change, from history to English literature - all "under one umbrella", a phrase he apologises for using but seems particularly apt in his case.

Crane took to being in front of a camera, while saying: "It's not my thing - I'm actually a writer, more used to sitting entirely on my own writing books."

Despite that, he finds it great fun. "I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested unless I was passionate about what I'm doing in the landscape. If you are passionate and get genuinely excited, you don't have to think too much about camera crews."

As for his next series, that will depend on the viewing figures for Great British Journeys. You're only as good as your last series, he says. Whatever the reaction, he's happy for the growth in TV programmes on the landscape. One reason, he says, is that climate change has become so topical and relevant to our lives. He reads the environmental reports and everything being published on the subject, feeling the science is very accessible.

As for the effects of climate change, the future will be "a very close run thing", he believes.

"Clearly we have to simultaneously adopt changes that are now in the pipeline and in the next 30 years. It's coming up with some method to slow climate change. My own view is it's now so urgent that the first thing to do is to buy the planet a bit more time."

Great British Journeys begins tomorrow on BBC2 at 8pm, repeated Thursday at 7pm.