Cols And Passes Of The British Isles

Product Description

The one & only guide to every col & pass in the British Isles, for cyclists, walkers & armchair travellers. A col is the lowest point on the saddle between two mountains. Graham Robb has spent years uncovering & cataloguing the 2, 002 cols & 105 passes scattered across the British Isles. Some of these obscure & magical sites are virgin cols that have never been crossed. Dozens were lost by the Ordnance Survey & are recorded only in ballads or monastic charters. The eleven cols of Hadrian`s Wall are practically unknown & have never been properly identified. These under-appreciated slices of natural beauty provide a new way of looking at British history, & a challenge for cyclists & walkers. ”A wonderful writer.. . No one else so relishes the odd corners of history”. (Sunday Times). ” He is such a warm, gentle & generous writer, with no faux scholarly tosh or solitary ecstasy riffs”. (Evening Standard) Graham Robb is an acclaimed historian & biographer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature & a Chevalier dans l` Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has won the Whitbread Biography Prize & the Heinemann Award for Victor Hugo, as well as the Ondaatje Prize & Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France. He lives on the English-Scottish border (and within a day`s ride of one hundred & seventy cols).