Mark Ellingham: The travel guide guru who's still roughing it

7am

It's a school day, so the first hour of Mark Ellingham's day is spent getting his 11-year-old son Miles ready for classes. The publisher and founder of the Rough Guides travel books has never learnt to drive, so they generally make the short journey on foot. After dropping Miles at school, Mark takes his dog for a walk on Hampstead Heath, which is near to his north London home and he takes pleasure in the fact he doesn't even need to cross the road to get there. The 48-year-old has time to gather his thoughts ahead of a busy week as Rough Guides is celebrating its 25th birthday from 3 May and things are a little hectic.

Graduating from Bristol University in 1982, and after several knock-backs from the BBC, Mark was inspired to write his first guide book to Greece mainly because he couldn't find an interesting job. "I wrote a synopsis for a very rough guide to Greece, sent it to a number of publishers, and one or two said they would be happy to look at it when it was finished, but then Routledge offered me £900 to complete it," he says. The first edition was 200 pages typewritten rather than typeset and did exactly what it said on the cover. The initial print run of 6,000 copies sold out almost immediately.

9am

Although Rough Guides became part of the Pearson publishing empire after it was acquired by Penguin in 1998, leading to windfalls for the staff, Mark Ellingham - a hippie at heart - has established his own more laid-back culture within the company. This means the working day at the company's office on the Strand generally starts at 10am. "This is one of the more civilised features of Rough Guides," says Mark, who prefers to wear jeans for the office. " We can avoid the worst of the rush-hour."

However, with anniversary celebrations to be organised and interviews with the press, the start of the working day is moved forward. Following the success of the guide to Greece, Routledge commissioned books on Spain and Portugal, then Mexico. Eventually in 1986, Mark and fellow publisher Martin Dunford borrowed money from Harrap and set up as independent publishers, going on to produce more than 200 titles. "Travel was so different when we started out," Mark recalls. "Although people took holidays in the 1970s, the concept of independent travel was a niche interest. Hardly anyone I knew had been to India or Thailand or Peru - while China or Vietnam or eastern Europe were closed to all but special-interest tour groups. Now travel to all these destinations is totally mainstream."

11am

Mark has an appointment to be interviewed by phone for radio and is quizzed about the ways in which guide books and travel have changed over the past 25 years. "When the first guides were published, our sphere of interests seemed quite radical - things like taking in local music in Athens, or clubbing in Lisbon, or going to watch Barcelona play football," he says.

Although the forerunner to the Lonely Planet guides series had begun in the 1970s, it initially concentrated on Asia and there was nothing similar covering Europe. "Guidebooks at the time existed in this strange parallel universe of the tourist, where locals had walk-on parts as waiters or doing a spot of folkloric dancing after dinner."

History seemed to stop at the end of the 19th century, he adds. "Yet the first three countries we covered, Greece, Spain, Portugal, had all just emerged from dictatorship, and the first thing you'd talk about in a bar, with local people, would be politics. I think we helped to bring travel guidebooks, and travel writing, into the modern world. These days, everyone wants to experience local and authentic aspects on their travels."

1pm

Having journeyed extensively to most corners of the earth, Mark unsurprisingly regards the environment as a key concern, and today he has a lunch meeting with Matthew Owen, the managing director of a charity CoolEarth which is being set up by the Labour MP Frank Field. The aim of the charity, which will be launched in June, is to allow people to buy parts of rainforest that are at risk, starting with Brazil and then expanding to take in Africa and Indonesia where deforestation is rampant. The land will be put into a local trust to be maintained with extra money going towards creating sustainable employment. Mark has come on board to create a website for the charity and is also working on a mini guide to rainforests.

Cheap flights have become one of Mark's bugbears and he is calling for a £100 tax on all flights to Europe and Africa, and £250 for flights tothe rest of the world. "I wish flying wasn't suddenly a semi-unacceptable proposition," he says. "The Government needs to act, there needs to be a moratorium on the expansion of airports." Although he admits Rough Guides has helped to foster an increased confidence in travel, he insists cheap flights are the major problem, causing damage through carbon emissions.

3pm

A large chunk of most afternoons is spent editing books and Mark has a couple of projects on the go. He is contracted to work three days a week at Rough Guides where he maintains the title of publisher, but he sees himself as more of a creative director and has a lot of input into which direction the company should take. Besides travel, Mark's other great passion is music and he is currently working on the second of three volumes of the Rough Guide to World Music. "Pulling this together is a nightmare," he says. It is the biggest, most complex book he has ever produced and contains hundreds of articles covering all kinds of local music.

5.30pm

There is just time for a quick look-in at Mark's other place of work, Sort Of Books, a small press he set up with his wife Natania Jansz, which produces just two or three titles a year. Its first title was a best-seller, Chris Stewart's Driving Over Lemons, a memoir about an Englishman running a remote mountain farm in Andalucia. "Its success has meant a lot of enduring goodwill," Mark says. He has a meeting over a couple of beers with sales staff to discuss publicity for coming summer titles.

7pm

It's the start of the weekend and Mark can indulge his passion for football. He is a lifelong Manchester United fan, a baton he has passed on to Miles. He might also spend some time planning a future trip, though these are restricted these days. Often he holidays with his family in the UK and tries to avoid flying whenever possible. Rough Guides has taken on the motto "Fly Less, Stay Longer" so as "to create more of an awareness with people about flights". He still likes to go somewhere completely new once in a while, and last year he went to Egypt for the first time, but his favourite destination is Sri Lanka, the home of his wife's family.

A rough guide to Mark Ellingham

Name: Mark Ellingham

Age: 48

Occupation: Writer/publisher

Career: 1982 - left Bristol University and wrote first Rough Guide (to Greece) for the publisher Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1986 - borrowed money from Harrap to buy out Rough Guides and set up as an independent publisher.

1998 - sold company to Penguin.

1999 - set up Sort Of Books, with Natania Jansz.

2004 - relaunched 'Songlines', the world music magazine.