Jo Tinsley is the editor and founder of Ernest Journal – an independent magazine for the curious and adventurous – co-author of The Odditorium: The tricksters, eccentrics, deviants and inventors whose obsessions changed the world and The Mysterium: Unexplained and extraordinary stories for a post-Nessie generation, editor of Waterfront and a freelance writer and curator.

Photography by Graeme Owsianski

ernest journal

Ernest is a journal for the curious and adventurous, which covers such diverse subjects as sea monsters, untranslatable words, wild man mythology, Victorian diableries, Brutalism, Iceland’s Huldufólk, ghost radio stations, the abused tintype, post-apocalyptic glass making, the psychology of Antarctic exploration, cryonics in Sussex, Futurist cooking, solargraphy and a room filled with 900 frozen brains.

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The Paper Time Machine

The Paper Time Machine is a luxurious coffee table book from the creator of Retronaut and the publishers of Letters of Note. As you flick back through the book, the subtle pip design illustrates your moving backward through history and around the world. Vibrant and surprising images are brought to life through meticulous colourisation, shaking the dust from our collective memory and bringing the past to life.

waterfront

Jo is the editor Waterfront, a fortnightly newspaper and biannual printed magazine for Friends of the Canal & River Trust, produced by Smoke Creatives.

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The Odditorium

The Odditorium: The tricksters, eccentrics, deviants and inventors whose obsessions changed the world is a playful re-telling of history, told not through the lens of its victors, but through the fascinating stories of a wealth of individuals who followed their obsessions and carved their own path through life.

The Mysterium

The Mysterium: Unexplained and extraordinary stories for a post-Nessie generation is a thoroughly modern exploration of the world’s most bizarre and enigmatic phenomena. Drawing on contemporary folklore, unsolved mysteries and unsettling oddities from the dark corners of the internet, the book delves into some of the strangest and most enduring stories of our modern age.

Wild guide

Wild Guide: Devon, Cornwall and South West is a compendium of West Country adventures, featuring the best secret beaches, wild swimming spots, ancient woodlands, wildflower meadows, lost ruins, hidden castles, sacred stones, grottoes, follies, hillforts and night walks.

waterfront

Working for Smoke Creatives, Jo curated a programme of talks, workshops and immersive experiences on the theme of water and landscape for Waterfront at Wilderness, Green Man and Caught by the River Thames festivals.

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Obonjan, Croatia

A week-long programme of talks and workshops on this island hideaway in the Adriatic, featuring wild swimming expeditions, solagraphy workshops and talks on Cloudbusting and the Sexual Revolution, the story of shelter, isolation and wilderness, and the secrets of the cowbell with authors David Bramwell, Dan Richards and Mathew Clayton.

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the odditorium

Working with co-author David Bramwell, Jo has hosted spoken word events at Buxton Festival, Brighton Fringe, Wilderness, Evesham Festival of Words and Fortean Society.

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Lonely Planet: São Tomé and Príncipe

The Secret Life of Africa’s (Second) Smallest Nation (Lonely Planet magazine, Nov 2017). Despite it’s billboard beauty, few have heard of São Tomé and Príncipe – twin volcanic islands lying 140 miles off the coast of Gabon, where the equator meets the meridian. Replete with castaway beaches, unspoilt hiking trails and tumbledown plantations producing some of world’s best chocolate, one thing is for sure – the charms of Africa’s second smallest country can’t remain secret for long.

Guardian & Sawdays: The FEVE Railway

Slow train through Spain: a narrow-gauge ride through España Verde (Guardian, Aug 2017). The Feve – unmarked on most Spanish railway maps – is a trio of 1,000mm narrow-gauge lines that dawdle from Bilbao to Ferrol, stopping at more than 100 stations along the way and immersing me in an astonishingly green landscape.

Greentraveller: travel guides

An online guide to the Northumberland National Park. Complete with undulating hills, rich heather moorlands, tall spruce forests and some of the darkest skies in Britain, this wild north eastern edge of England is one of the country’s most tranquil and impressive destinations.

Waterfront: Follow the Sun

Enter the spectacular world of solargraphy – the art of capturing the sun’s journey across the sky – on the Bridgwater & Taunton Canal. A short film, made for the Canal & River Trust on behalf of Smoke Creatives.

Waterfront: The Towpath Runner

A short film made for the Canal & River Trust. Ruth Allen shares her stretch of the Cromford Canal in Derbyshire and explores why jogging beside water has become integral to her feeling at home.

The No.9 Bus to Utopia

A five-part series, with David Bramwell, exploring the world's most extraordinary communities including: Damanhur (a 1000-strong Italian community who have built the 8th wonder of the world deep inside the Alps), the Other World Kingdom (a female-run kinky-utopia in the heart of the Czech Republic), Esalen (a hot spring community in Big Sur, California, conceived by Aldous Huxley), Findhorn (a spiritual community on a Scottish caravan site) and Christiania (a self-styled 'losers' paradise' in Copenhagen).