Full Description
'This book confirms the splendid eccentricity of the British, which often involves oddly dressed men opting to walk long distances for no apparent reason.' - BBC Countryfile magazine
'Laws' sprightly, often arch, account of Britain's hiking heroes is a pleasure to read.' - Walk magazine
'The great affair is to move: to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot,' wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. This book celebrates the history of walking for leisure and pleasure.
There's no shortage of the famous, and the not-so-famous, exponents of a good, long walk: Dr Jonson and his faithful Boswell on their Hebridean jaunt; John Taylor, whose Penniless Pilgrimage - a record of his 1618 journey from London to Edinburgh - provided the first account of a walking tour; and Samuel Coleridge who conceived his epic tale of the Ancient Mariner on a ramble through Devon. Celebrating the history of walking for leisure and pleasure, Bill Laws tells the stories behind key walking inventions such as the rucksack, bloomers, youth hostels and the long-distance route.
Fully illustrated throughout, A Ramble Through the History of Walking is sure to delight anyone interested in the engaging history of one of man's favourite pastimes.
Contents
Title
Copyright
Contents
'The Great Affair is to Move'
Chapter 1 - First Footers
Thomas Coryate
Mr Bos, Drover
Ben Jonson
William Lithgow
Foster Powell
Footnote: Walking Boots
Captain Robert Barclay Allardice
Alfred Watkins
Chapter 2 - Devoted Walkers
John Bunyan
Footnote: What Walkers Wear
Pastor Moritz
Reverends Bingley, Williams and Warner
Francis Kilvert
Canon Cooper
Chapter 3 - Poets in Motion
'Three persons and one soul'
Samuel Coleridge
William Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth
William Hazlitt
Thomas de Quincey
Edward Thomas
Footnote: The Rucksack
Chapter 4 - Bringing it to Book
John Taylor
William Hutton
Ellen Weeton
Footnote: Bloomers
George Borrow
Robert Louis Stevenson
Hilaire Belloc
William Hudson
Chapter 5 - A Walk on the Wild Side
Leslie Stephen
Benny Rothman
Footnote: The Devil's Rope
Tom Stephenson
Stephen Graham
Herbert Gatliff
Chapter 6 - Route-Masters and Record Breakers
Hugh Munro and William Poucher
'A. Walker'
Frank Noble
Footnote: The Stile
Trailblazers
Record Breakers
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
