Feet in the Clouds Find!
This is the title of a book which was published in 2004 and which won Richard Askwith, the author, the Best New Writer prize at the British Sports Publishing Awards. It is a tale of fell-running and obsession. For those of us who live in Cumbria fell-running, along with hound trailing, is a major sport but most people probably have either never heard of it or have little idea of the sport and its history.
Richard Askwith brings the men and the mountains to life in this strangely compelling tale of endurance and stamina. We meet characters like Bill Teasdale who, in 1953, is described in the Craven Herald as " bounding and springing over knee-deep heather, huge boulders and high walls..." And Bob Graham who decided to celebrate his 42nd birthday by running forty-two peaks in twenty-four hours. He succeeded even though he ran wearing a pyjama top and plimsolls and eating mainly boiled eggs.
And then the reader meets Joss Naylor. Joss was born at Wasdale Head and has lived in that tiny community all his life. I was lucky enough to watch Joss Naylor winning the Guides Race at Grasmere Sports several times during the 1970's and it really was one of those things you needed to see with your own eyes to understand how amazing a fell-runner he was. In 1975, he raised the Lake District 24 hour record to a scarcely comprehensible seventy-two peaks. Richard Askwith describes Joss Naylor thus...
"But the man who is truly at home in the mountains sees more deeply than that. He can see that our selves can never be entirely divorced from our surroundings; and that the man who is lucky enough to live among beautiful hills, and who enters into a beautiful relationship with them, is also deeply in touch with himself. Joss chose to pit himself heroically against the mountains not just because they were there, but because his heart was there too; and also because, in his feloow mountain-lovers and fell-runners, he found companions whom he could respect and love. Striving to achieve great things on the fells wasn't just an amusing diversion from his life; it was his life."
A fascinating book with a wonderful cast of characters set against the backdrop of beautiful scenery - by the time you have finished reading it you almost feel like running up the nearest hill!
20 August 2009 from Mary Rossall
Finds
- On Lindale Hill
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
- Haweswater by Sarah Hall
- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
- Geese, cattle wallopers and secret Irish paths
- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
Recent posts
- Reading Detectives film
- Thank you!
- Coffee and books at the Bluebell Bookshop
- Mary learns to blog!
- Lucky 13!
- Grange over Sands get reading
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