Book description
"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 Johnson and his faithful Boswell on their Hebridean jaunt; Johnn
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. The author also includes the
stories of key invetions: the cagoule, the Thermos flask, the
rucksack, Gore-Tex, and the walking pole. Fully illustrated
throughout, this is an engaging history of one of man's favourite pastimes.
