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Continue reading →: Pedestriennes : The Ladies step out…
(See ‘A Step Too Far’ for an introduction to Pedestrianism…and ‘A Journey of a Thousand Miles…’ for the Barclay Match) The conventional notion is that in the nineteenth century women simply did not do sports that involved strenuous exercise. In 1891 Punch gave its view of the progress in female…
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Continue reading →: A Journey of a Thousand Miles…
On Newmarket Heath in the summer of 1809 Captain Robert Barclay (1779-1854), a landed gentleman with an estate in Scotland, walked one mile each hour for 1,000 consecutive hours (41 days and 16 hours). By doing so he won a wager of 1,000 guineas and cemented his reputation as the…
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Continue reading →: A step too far…?
“Pedestrianism affords the best species of exercise, and may be said to include much that is valuable to mankind.” One of the most popular spectator sports of the eighteenth and nineteenth centurie was “pedestrianism,” competitive walking events that covered often huge distances. It derived originally from informal bets and challenges…
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Continue reading →: The Origins of Bristol : Myth and Archaeology
“The arch and tower of St. John’s are curious and interesting objects. Two statues still adorn this tower, which till very lately, were inscribed with the names of ‘Brennus and Belinus,’ the reputed founders of Bristol. ….probable that they were executed posterior to 1480, about which period the exploits of…
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Continue reading →: The Plague Doctor is in…
The Plague, or Black Death, first struck Western Europe in 1348 and is believed to have wiped out around half of Europe’s population. The disease itself made a number of comebacks over the years, most notably in the 1600s. The role of ‘Plague Doctor’ has existed since at least the…
“An unsystematic and untidy search through stuff…”
As the name suggests, this is a random wander though bits and pieces, often odd and unusual, that spark my interest. I haven’t turned comments on for now; if a post sparks something in you then share it with others.
Serendipity… You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’: as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.
Horace Walpole
“One of the great joys of life, to one who is properly constituted, is to rummage around in a bookstore.”
Publishers Weekly, 1873
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