Feet in the Clouds

Winner of Best New Writer - British Sports Publishing Awards. Winner of the Bill Rollinson Prize for Landscape and Tradition - Lakeland Book Awards. Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award and for the Boardman-Tasker Prize.

An inspiring insight into one of the oldest extreme sports, and a lyrical tribute to Britain's mountains and the men and women who live among them, this is the definitive story of fell-running. With an introduction from bestselling author Robert Macfarlane, this is a complete portrait of one of the few sports to have remained utterly true to its roots - in which the point is not fame or fortune but to run the ancient, wild landscape, and to be a hero, if at all, within one's own valley.

Feet in the Clouds by Richard Askwith takes readers into a world of forbidding rockscapes, horizontal rain, fear, exhaustion, and stunning natural beauty, alongside his own attempt at one of the purest and toughest challenges imaginable: the Bob Graham Round, the sport's traditional test of 42 Lake District peaks in 24 hours.

Along the way, Askwith encounters some of the most prodigious - and unsung - athletes Britain has produced, such as Joss Naylor, who covered the equivalent of four Everests in a single run. Gripping, funny and moving, this is a story that any aspiring runner, endurance athlete or mountain-lover will well understand: of extremity, heroism and the experience of a lifetime.