Colegrave - Scraps of Wool: a Journey Through the Golden Age of Travel Writing

Bill Colegrave has collected and been inspired by travel books for more than four decades. He also published them as owner of Cadogan Guides. His own book Halfway House to Heaven (2011) tells the story of his journey up the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan to find the source of the Oxus River in the High Pamirs. He has visited more than 110 countries. He has represented Great Britain (seniors) at real tennis and also in the World Ptanque Championships. He lives in London.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Halfway House to Heaven

Arne Naess 19372004

Arne was a superb leader, choosing the right people to work with and consult, then making firm clear decisions. He was always a delight to be with, on a mountain or ski slope, in a restaurant or pub; that wicked smile, boundless enthusiasm and warmth of spirit that led to so many great adventures.

Sir Chris Bonington, who joined Arne and his Norwegian team on the successful 1985 Everest expedition

A buccaneer adventurer, he always wanted to defy the odds and the conventions. His great gift was to enthuse others in these endeavours; it was my privilege to be one of them.

Bill Colegrave

A dedication to our father who left us too young from his kids, Chris, Katinka, Leona, Ross, Evan, Nicklas, Louis

Special thanks to Camilla Astrup and Ross Arne Naess for sponsoring this page.

these bits and pieces of the random world are little more than scraps of wool on a barbed wire fence; theyre there to be collected, spun and woven into the fiction of the book

Jonathan Raban, For Love and Money: A Writing Life , 1989

Dear Reader,

The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). Were just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. At the back of this book, youll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

If youre not yet a subscriber, we hope that youll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a 5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com , make your pledge and type wool5 in the promo code box when you check out.

Thank you for your support,

Dan, Justin and John

Founders, Unbound

Dervla Murphy, Full Tilt

Judith Schalansky, Atlas of Remote Islands

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia

Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks

Paul Bowles, Without Stopping

John Masters, Bugles and a Tiger

Ana Briongos, Black on Black

Paul Heiney, One Wild Song

Isabella Bird, A Ladys Life in the Rocky Mountains

Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa

Ejnar Mikkelsen, Lost in the Arctic

Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World

Sylvain Tesson, Consolations of the Forest

Maurice Herzog, Annapurna

Heinrich Harrer, The White Spider

Wade Davis, Into the Silence

John Hunt, The Ascent of Everest

W. E. Bowman, The Ascent of Rum Doodle

Redmond OHanlon, In Trouble Again

Rudyard Kipling, American Notes

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

John Gimlette, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig

John Betjeman, Shell Guide to Cornwall

Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here?

Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani

Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

Wilfred Thesiger, The Marsh Arabs

Freya Stark, Ionia: A Quest

Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Broken Road

Ryszard Kapuciski, The Shadow of the Sun

Alexander Kinglake, Eothen

Joseph Thomson, Through Masai Land

Jonathan Raban, Driving Home

Ryszard Kapuciski, Travels with Herodotus

Redmond OHanlon, Congo Journey

Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways

Charles Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands

V. S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness

Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the C vennes

Richard Holmes, Footsteps

Pico Iyer, The Lady and the Monk

Jenny Balfour Paul, Deeper Than Indigo

Cheryl Strayed, Wild

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Jan Morris, Venice

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey

Norman Lewis, Naples 44

Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls, Cadogan Guide to Rome

George Nathaniel Curzon, The Pamirs and the Source of the Oxus

Alexandra David-Nel, My Journey to Lhasa

Colin Thubron, To a Mountain in Tibet

Alexander Frater, Chasing the Monsoon

Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in the Years 1795, 1796 and 1797

Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent

Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World

Sir Ernest Shackleton, South

Ernest Hemingway, True at First Light

Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

Elspeth Huxley , The Flame Trees of Thika

Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari

Alexandra Fuller, Scribbling the Cat

Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts

Colin Thubron, Behind the Wall

Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways

Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers

Jon Swain, River of Time

Sybille Bedford, Pleasures and Landscapes

Norman Douglas, Siren Land

Martha Gellhorn, Travels with Myself and Another

Sybille Bedford, A Visit to Don Otavio

Peter Fleming, News from Tartary

Graham Greene, Journey Without Maps

Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Eastern Approaches

Freya Stark, The Minaret of Djam

Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Jason Elliot, An Unexpected Light

Rory Stewart, The Places in Between