THE boundaries of human capability are hard to grasp. Determination, nerve, intelligence or physique produce achievements so far beyond common experience as to seem scarcely credible. Motivations might range from conquest to sport or merely an urge to excel. For example, Kim Collison—who, in 2020, ran 96 miles in 24 hours over 78 Lake District peaks-says simply that he 'loved the hills and the physical release'.
Mountains are a testing theatre. During the 1924 Everest expedition, despite blizzards, delay and exhaustion, four Englishmen climbed within 1,000ft of the wind-whipped, icy summit -wearing pullovers, tweed jackets and gaberdine smocks. Two, George Mallory and Andrew Sandy' Irvine, were thereafter seen ‘moving with considerable alacrity only 650ft from the top and may, indeed, have achieved it, if not for their fatal fall.
The 1924 expedition to Everest traverses the foot of the ice wall of the North Col
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's climb in 1953 was fuelled by oxygen. Yet, by 1986, Italian super-climber Reinhold Messner, despite losing seven toes to frostbite, had climbed all 14 of the world's highest peaks 'by fair means'—without oxygen. An astonishing blend of will, skill and enviable lungs.
Ocean sailors have a triple problem: where are they, will the sea overwhelm them and can they survive the pressures of a lengthy voyage? Ferdinand Magellan sailed into the unknown with five ships in 1519. Shipwreck, mutiny, tempest and scurvy harrowed his fleet. He was killed attacking a Philippine island resisting conversion to Christianity. Only Victoria continued, captained by the dogged Juan Elcano (previously chained for months by Magellan as a mutineer), to be the first to circumnavigate the world.
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin March 16, 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin March 16, 2022 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Save our family farms
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A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
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Best of British
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Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
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After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
