Editions

Cols and Passes of the British Isles

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780141981451

  • Length: 240  Pages

  • Dimensions: 234mm x 18mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 305g

  • RRP: £12.99

Cols and Passes of the British Isles

A col is the lowest point on the saddle between two mountains. Graham Robb has spent years uncovering and cataloguing the 2,002 cols and 105 passes scattered across the British Isles.

Some of these obscure and magical sites are virgin cols that have never been crossed. Dozens were lost by the Ordnance Survey and are recorded only in ballads or monastic charters. The eleven cols of Hadrian's Wall are practically unknown and have never been properly identified.

These underappreciated slices of natural beauty provide a new way of looking at British history, and a challenge for cyclists and walkers.

  • Imprint: Penguin

  • ISBN: 9780141981451

  • Length: 240  Pages

  • Dimensions: 234mm x 18mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 305g

  • RRP: £12.99

Reviews

  • If you have legs, or a bicycle, or indeed both, you are going to love this book...The work that has gone into this small, vast, perfectly formed and beautifully bound thing is quite incredible.

    Spectator

  • Don't pass up the chance to discover 2,002 ways to route plan across Britain

    Roger Cox, Scotsman

  • A wonderful writer . . . No one else so relishes the odd corners of history

    Sunday Times

  • He is such a warm, gentle and generous writer, with no faux scholarly tosh or solitary ecstasy riffs

    Evening Standard

  • A delicious and hypnotically fascinating masterpiece of squinty-eyed fanaticism

    Stephen Bayley, Spectator Books of the Year

  • It's more than a mere compendium of geographical data, Robb's warmth and passion for the subject offers a refreshing take on reading the landscape of the British Isles - and a different way of thinking about cols in general

    Sb Nation

More from this Author

About the Author

Graham Robb

Graham Robb is an acclaimed historian and biographer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has won the Whitbread Biography Prize and the Heinemann Award for Victor Hugo, as well as the Ondaatje Prize and Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France. He lives on the English-Scottish border (and within a day's ride of one hundred and seventy cols).

Graham Robb

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