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Articles 981 à 1000 sur 1903
First Crossing of America - Alexander Mackenzie"Endowed by nature with an acquisitive mind and an enterprising spirit", Mackenzie, a Scot…
engaged in the Canadian fur trade, resolved, as he out it "to test the practicability of penetrating across the continent of America". In 1789 he followed a river (the Mackenzie) to the sea; but it turned out to be the Arctic Ocean. He tried again in 1793 and duly reached the Pacific at Queen Charlotte Sound in what is now British Columbia. Although this was his first recorded overland crossing of the continent, Mackenzie was not given to trumpeting his achievement. In his narrative it passes without celebration and very nearly without mention.Meeting the Shoshonee - Meriwether LewisAs Thomas Jefferson's personal secretary, Lewis was chosen to lead the US government's 1804-5 expedition to explore (and to establish US interests) from Mississippi to the Pacific. Travelling up the Missouri river to the continental divide in Montana, Lewis left the main party under his colleague William Clark, and scouted ahead. With everything now dependant on securing the goodwill of the formidable Shoshonee, he showed admirable caution; but the issue was eventually decided by a fortuitous reunion between the Indian wife of one of his men and her long-lost brethren.The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places: Antarctic (Mammoth Books #345)
Par John Keay. 1993
Farthest South - Ernest Henry ShackletonBorn in Ireland, Shackleton joined the merchant navy before being recruited for Captain Scott's 1901…
expedition to Antarctica. He was with Scott on his first attempt to reach the South Pole and, though badly shaken by the experience, realized that success was now feasible. In 1907, with a devoted team but little official support, he launched his own expedition. A scientific programme gave it respectability but Shackleton was essentially an adventurer, beguiled alike by the challenge of the unknown and the reward of celebrity. His goal was the Pole, 90 degrees south, and by Christmas 1908 his four-man team were already at 85 degrees.The Pole at Last - Roald AmundsenAmundsen's 1903-6 voyage through North West Passage had heralded a new era in exploration. The route by then was tolerably well known and its environs explored. His vessel was a diminutive fishing smack, his crew a group of Norwegian friends, and his object simply to be the first to have sailed through. He did it because it had not been done and "because it was there". The same applied to his 1911 conquest of the South Pole. Shackleton had shown the way and Amundsen drew the right conclusions. The Pole was not a scientist's playground nor a mystic's dreamland; it was simply a physical challenge. Instead of officers, gentlemen and scientists, he took men who could ski and dogs that could pull; if need be, the former could eat the latter. The only real anxiety was whether they would forestall Scott.In Extremis - Robert Falcon ScottScott was chosen to lead the 1900-4 British National Antarctic Expedition. Its considerable achievements seemed to vindicate the choice of a naval officer more noted for integrity and courage than any polar experience, and, following Shackleton's near success, in 1910 Scott again sailed south intending to combine a busy scientific programme with a successful bid for the South Pole. On 17 January 1912 he and four others duly reached the Pole, indeed they sighted a real pole and it bore a Norwegian flag; Amundsen had got there 34 days ahead of them. Bitterly disappointed, soon overtaken by scurvy and bad weather, and still dragging sledges laden with geological specimens, they trudged back. The tragedy which then unfolded eclipsed even Amundsen's achievement and won them an immortality beyond the dreams of any explorer.A Place in Italy
Par Simon Mawer. 1992
'You can't go and live there,' a despairing friend remarked, 'it's not even in Rome.' And it certainly wasn't, but…
still the author and his wife went to Avea, tucked away amongst the woods and gorges of the Lazio countryside.There they found no Colosseum, or Pantheon; there were no Ferraris racing around the Palazzi Navona, Venezia or Farnese. Instead they discovered the true agony and beauty of Italy: the instinctive warmth of the Avea villagers, the camorra, Little Tony - Italy's answer to Elvis - the elegant and sophisticated Colasanti family and a landlord like no other, Pippo, the self-styled Duca di Avea. This is not a story of the high culture of Italy's big cities, instead of how two foreigners learned to eat the Italian way, drive the Italian way, survive the Italian way - even to have a child the Italian way - and how in doing it they came to love this hidden corner of the most visited and least understood country in Europe.Rolling Through The Isles: A Journey Back Down the Roads that led to Jupiter
Par Ted Simon. 2012
From the bestselling author of Jupiter's Travels and Dreaming of Jupiter comes an entertaining and inspiring new journey round Britain.Having…
crisscrossed the globe twice, Ted returns to the British Isles to rediscover the country of his youth. The result is a revealing portrait of modern Britain and a witty and affectionate journey back to the past, when Ted would hitchhike across the country visiting friends (and girlfriends).He returns to the site of his old school with its astonishing war time history and visits familiar haunts where he did his National Service and got his first job in newspapers. He also visits less-familiar places. Some inspire him (Winchester Cathedral). Others defeat him (a tax office in Nottingham). As he rolls through the Isles, he discovers that a great deal has changed: busier roads, bureaucracy and, worst of all, the dreaded 'Sat Nav'. But there is also much to celebrate and enjoy along the way.Packed with fascinating stories, extraordinary encounters and glorious depictions of the British countryside, Rolling through the Isles takes the reader on an unforgettable trip with a celebrated adventurer and writer.Stranded on Bering Island - Georg Wilhelm StellerAs physician and scientific know-all on Vitus Bering's 1741 voyage, Steller shared its…
triumphs, including landing the first Europeans in Alaska. He also shared its disasters. Returning across the north Pacific to Russian Kamchatka, the crew was stricken with scurvy and the vessel grounded. Bering and half his men would die; the others barely survived nine months of Arctic exposure. They owed much to the German-born Steller whose response to each crisis was invariably right, although no less irksome for being so.The Walk to Moscow - John Dundas CochraneA naval officer made redundant by the end of the Napoleonic wars, Cochrane offered his services to African exploration. They were declined. He then hit on the idea of making the first solo journey round the world on foot. Heading east, he left Dieppe in 1820 and after some scarcely credible Siberian excursions, reached the Pacific opposite Alaska. There the enterprise foundered when he fell for, and married, a doe-eyed Kamchatkan teenager. In this breathless account of the stages between St. Petersburg and Moscow, the greatest ever "pedestrian traveller" betrays both his extraordinary stamina and his emotional vulnerability.The very best writing on the Antarctic, from James Cook's eighteenth-century assertion that 'no man will ever venture further than…
I have done' to Lynne Cox's description of her epic, icy swim in the twenty-first century - 32 first-hand accounts of men and women challenging one of the Earth's last true wildernesses. Here you will find both legendary tales of heroism and startling contemporary accounts of the impact of global warming on the Earth's sole undeveloped continent, including: 'Dog Days' by Robert Falcon Scott 'The Loss of the Endurance' by Ernest Shackleton.'Alone' by Richard E Byrd.'The Killer under the Water' by Gareth Wood.'Melting Point' by David Helvarg.'Swimming to Antarctica' by Lynne Cox.Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town
Par Michael Rips. 2001
A refreshing antidote to the saccharine charms of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence and Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan…
Sun, this is the quirky and hilarious memoir of a criminal lawyer who gives up his New York practise to spend a year in the Etruscan town of Sutri, near Rome, where he moves -reluctantly - with his artist wife and baby. Himself something of an eccentric from a bizarre Nebraskan family, he has spent his adult life living in hotels; and in Sutri, he heads straight for the cafe in the main square. From there he observes the baroque events of small-town life, conjures up a cast of Italian eccentrics (including Pasquale and his hypersensitive organ of smell), and relishes the weirdness and the wonder of Sutri 's history, folklore, architecture and above all its food -particularly the notorious 'fagioli regina' (beans in a tomato and pig skin sauce) and the annual Bean Festival. Part of the delight of reading this memoir is that it not only evokes the sights and smells of an ancient and little-known town in Southern Italy, and brings its people to extraordinary life, but it also reveals the irresistible foibles and philosophy of a talented and unusual mind. Funny, philosophical and surprisingly moving, this is the story of how a rootless American finds home in the most unexpected places and how Pasquale and his compatriots put life into perspective in the strangest way.Left For Dead In The Outback: How I Survived 71 Days Lost in a Desert Hell
Par Greg McLean, Ricky Megee. 2009
'No shoes, no vehicle, no food, no water and no idea. I'd always been one of those blokes who ragged…
on people who found themselves lost in the desert. Now I was one of those people. It was hard, desolate country for a man all alone in bare feet. Nevertheless, I started to walk. And walk. The more I walked, I figured, the less distance I'd have to travel to get found. It was faulty logic, but it was the best I could come up with. In April 2006 the news broke of an amazing feat of survival by a white man in one of the most inhospitable areas of Australia. Ricky Megee was found sheltering by a dam on a remote cattle property in the Northern Territory. After being abducted on the Buntine Highway, drugged, then left for dead, Ricky had walked for ten days in bare feet through unforgiving terrain in blistering heat. Stumbling upon a dam, he set up camp there and survived for almost three months on leeches, grasshoppers, frogs and plants, losing 60 kg in body weight the process. In "Left for Dead in the Outback", Ricky Megee gives a full and frank account of his abduction and survival, for the first time since his extraordinary rescue. Vividly told, its a gripping yet inspiring story of how one man endures a terrible ordeal and lives to tell the tale.Botswana Time
Par Will Randall. 2005
Will Randall travels with a purpose, as well as an outrageous sense of fortune. In INDIAN SUMMER he found himself,…
by chance, having the extraordinary experience of helping slum schoolchildren put on a play to help save their school. In Botswana he was taken up by a headmaster to teach a class of six year olds at The River of Life school. They are football crazy and one of Will's jobs is to take them to play neighbouring (sometimes as much as 100 miles away) schools. Camping en-route or staying in farms and rural villages, often travelling by foot or dug-out punts, thousands of antelope, elephant, buffalo and zebra follow their progress. The sound of lions, leopards and hyenas become the soundtrack of their dreams. Against all the odds they find themselves preparing for the Grand Final of the season - the titanic clash with arch rivals, Victoria Falls Primary school.Both an endearing personal story and a travel book about a little-known but highly successful country, BOTSWANA TIME will win new fans for both Will Randall and the extraordinary country of Botswana.Billy Connolly's Route 66: The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip
Par Billy Connolly. 2011
Britain's best-loved comedian hits the most famous highway in the world on an unforgettable journey.Billy Connolly, music-lover, biker, and scourge…
of the beige and bland the world over, has dreamed about taking a trip on the legendary Route 66 since he heard Chuck Berry belting out one of the greatest rock 'n' roll records of all time. And now he's finally had the chance to do it, travelling every mile on his custom-made trike in search of the real America that can still be found beyond the nation's freeways.Taking in both the essential icons and the hidden gems of the 'Mother Road', Billy also meets up with plenty of the memorable characters who call it home. With his instinct for a good story, and the infectious enthusiasm that has made him our most engaging national treasures, Billy Connolly is the ultimate guide to the ultimate road trip.Ghost Riders: Travels with American Nomads
Par Richard Grant. 2003
Richard Grant has never spent more than twenty-two consecutive nights under the same roof. Motivated partly by his own wanderlust…
and partly by his realisation that America is a land populated by wanderers, he set out to test his theory. AMERICAN NOMADS is the extraordinary result. 'Freedom is impossible and meaningless within the confines of sedentary society, the only true freedom is the freedom to cross the land, beholden to no one'. Grant follows the trails of the first European to wander across the American West (a failed conquistador); joins a group of rodeo-competing cowboys (and gets thrown by a mechanical bull); tells the story of the vanishing nomadic Indians and links up with 300,000 'gerito gypsies' - old people who live and travel in their RVs (Recreational Vehicles).'When all is said and done, there are two types of men: those who stay at home and those who do not' Kipling. This is the story of those that 'did not' who are populated - and are still travelling - in America.Bandit Roads: Into the Lawless Heart of Mexico
Par Richard Grant. 2008
There are many ways to die in the Sierra Madre, a notorious nine-hundred-mile mountain range in northern Mexico where AK-47s…
are fetish objects, the law is almost non-existent and power lies in the hands of brutal drug mafias. Thousands of tons of opium and marijuana are produced there every year. Richard Grant thought it would be a good idea to travel the length of the Sierra Madre and write a book about it. He was warned before he left that he would be killed. But driven by what he calls 'an unfortunate fascination' for this mysterious region, Grant sets off anyway. In a remarkable piece of investigative writing, he evokes a sinister, surreal landscape of lonely mesas, canyons sometimes deeper than the Grand Canyon, hostile villages and an outlaw culture where homicide is the most common cause of death and grandmothers sell cocaine. Finally his luck runs out and he finds himself fleeing for his life, pursued by men who would murder a stranger in their territory 'to please the trigger finger'.Eight Men And A Duck: An Improbable Voyage by Reed Boat to Easter Island
Par Nick Thorpe. 2003
Nick Thorpe was innocently travelling around South America with his wife, Ali, when he came across an American adventurer planning…
to sail from Chile to Easter Island on a Bolivian boat made of reeds. Inspired by the great Thor Heyerdahl, Phil Buck had recruited seven men to join him on this experiment to discover whether it might have been possible that Polynesia was first settled from South America rather than Asia. But when one of them dropped out a place in the crew became available for Nick.What followed was a somewhat bizarre expedition undertaken by a rather makeshift vessel, a couple of ducks (one of which could have only guessed at its fate) and a group of men, who, when all was said and done, weren't quite sure how to sail a boat...Brilliantly told, EIGHT MEN AND A DUCK is a feel-good, hilarious tale of storms, amateur seamen and the occasional shark.Ciao Asmara
Par Justin Hill. 2002
Asmara is the capital of Eritrea - a surreally Italian city at the centre of an ex-Italian colony that has…
been at war with its neighbour Ethiopia (who claim sovereignty over Eritrea) for over ten years. Amidst broken palaces (built by the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie), nomadic desert encampments and war-torn towns, Hill found a god-fearing people remarkably resistant to everything fate has thrown at them. This book is a tribute to their resilience and will stand beside Philip Gouravitch's Rwandan book, WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW YOU WILL BE KILLED WITH YOUR FAMILIES, as a classic account of contemporary Africa.Indian Summer
Par Will Randall. 2004
While attempting to teach at an inner London comprehensive Will Randall is taken up by an elderly German woman who…
asks him to accompany her to India. Nothing ventured, he agrees and so begins a wonderful life-changing adventure. Set down in Puna (3 hours from Bombay) he begins work teaching English at a slum school. Most of the children are orphans or parentless (one lost his parents four years previously when his mother had let go of his hand at a railway station and he 'd boarded the wrong train ). When zamidars -slum barons - arrive and threaten to pull down the school Randall has to put on a fund-raising performance of the Indian epic The Ramayana in order to help the slum dwellers buy their own land. Meanwhile he's also been spotted by a Bollywood Director who persuades him to take the role of leading man in his new film.Will Randall is 'the teacher who travels' and, as in SOLOMON TIME, this is a funny and heart-warming account of how one man's enthusiasm and old-fashioned desire to do good have helped to preserve a community.Another Long Day On The Piste: A Season in the French Alps
Par Will Randall. 2008
Writer, adventurer, ex-teacher and veteran of umpteen travel disasters, Will Randall has fallen off donkeys in Spain and out of…
canoes in the Solomon Islands, but none of this has prepared him for a disastrous season as a ski-bum with a posse of raucous, hard-drinking ex-students.Dismally unfashionable and hopeless at skiing, Randal finds that his stay in the charming Alpine backwater of mont St Bernard brings a whole host of new opportunities for domestic catastrophe, romantic rejection and public humiliation, including a stint as a chalet girl and an encounter with a Russian oligarch and his hair-raising entourage.Wry, self-deprecating and deliriously funny, ANOTHER LONG DAY ON THE PISTE is a rollercoaster of a travel adventure and essential apres-ski reading.And Did Those Feet: Walking Through 2000 Years of British and Irish History
Par Charlie Connelly. 2009
The landscape of the British Isles is filled with history, much of which we miss as it flashes past the…
car window. Do we even realise that we're following the same path as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, or that we're driving past the exact spot where King Harold was killed, shot through the eye with an arrow? As a lover of both history and the British countryside, Charlie Connelly decided to rectify this, and set out on a series of walks that recreate famous historical journeys. En route he retells the story of the original trip while discovering who and what now inhabit these iconic routes. Walking in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Charlie journeys alongside Boudicca's ghost in Norfolk, relives Bonnie Prince Charlie's flight to Skye disguised as Flora MacDonald's maid and takes the same 32-mile round trip as the starving Louisburgh famine walkers. He suffers broken toes, becomes trapped in the Scottish Parliament and encounters dead poets and a surprisingly high number of mad old women in woolly hats. Told with Charlie's customary charm and wit, And Did Those Feet will reveal the historical secrets hidden in the much-loved coastal, country and urban landscapes of Britain.Adrift In Caledonia: Boat-Hitching for the Unenlightened
Par Nick Thorpe. 2007
One clear morning in May, Nick Thorpe left his Edinburgh flat, ducked off the commuter route and hitched a ride…
aboard a little white canal boat, heading west towards the sea. It was the first mutinous step in a delightful boat-hopping odyssey that would take him 2500 miles through Scotland's canals, lochs and coastal waters, from the industrial Clyde to the scattered islands of Viking Shetland. Writing with characteristic humour and candour, the award-winning author of EIGHT MEN AND A DUCK plots a curiously existential voyage, inspired by those who have left the warm hearth for the promise of a stretched horizon. Whether rowing a coracle with a chapter of monks, scanning for the elusive Nessie, hitting the rocks with Captain Calamity or clinging to the rigging of a tall ship, Thorpe weaves a narrative that is by turns funny and poignant - a nautical pilgrimage for any who have ever been tempted to try a new path just to see where it might take them. Part travelogue, part memoir, ADRIFT IN CALEDONIA is a unique and affectionate portrait of a sea-fringed nation - and of the drifter's quest to belong.Billy Connolly's Tracks Across America
Par Billy Connolly. 2016
An epic trip across America with much-loved national treasure and comedy legend, Billy ConnollyBilly Connolly has spent much of his…
life in the United States, where he now lives. It's a country he knows and loves a great deal, but even someone as well-travelled as Billy can always discover new things about such a vast nation. So he's off on the move again, this time via the tracks of the great railroads that helped to build the country.Billy's adventure takes him on an incredible trip through the backyard of America, tracing the routes taken by the first European settlers westwards from Chicago to California, then back down south and eastwards through Arizona, Texas, Alabama and finally New York, over 6,000 miles and 26 states later.It's a journey through a country you don't get to see from 30,000 feet in the air - the real America of friendly people with fascinating tales to tell which not only give us an insight into their lives, but also into the life of their great homeland. And it's a journey that couldn't be shared with a more entertaining companion.Hop aboard and join Billy on a trip you'll never forget.Update: Type size issue in ebook now fixed.Vanishing Cornwall (Virago Modern Classics #132)
Par Daphne Du Maurier. 1981
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCAAn eloquent elegy on the past of a county she loved so much - The…
Times 'There was a smell in the air of tar and rope and rusted chain, a smell of tidal water. Down harbour, around the point, was the open sea. Here was the freedom I desired, long sought-for, not yet known. Freedom to write, to walk, to wander, freedom to climb hills, to pull a boat, to be alone . . . I for this, and this for me.'Daphne du Maurier lived in Cornwall for most of her life. Its rugged coastline, wild terrain and tumultuous weather inspired her imagination, and many of her works are set there, including Rebecca, Jamaica Inn and Frenchman's Creek.In Vanishing Cornwall she celebrates the land she loved, exploring its legends, its history and its people, eloquently making a powerful plea for Cornwall's preservation.