BOOK COVER: Alone - though he was just married – and on foot, Nicholas Crane embarked on an extraordinary adventure: a seventeen-month journey along the chain of mountains which stretches across Europe from Cape Finisterre to Istanbul.

With only an umbrella for company, he tramped along the Pyrenees, and crossed the Cevennes in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson. In winter he climbed over Mont Blanc and the Alps, then through the forested Carpathians and Balkan ranges, surviving storms, a drought and one-hundred-year-old maps. Shepherds, cheesemakers, gunslingers, and anti-social brown bear and a prostitute who wouldn’t that ‘No’ for an answer were among the characters he encountered in an epic walk which revealed some of the darker legacies of Europe’s history. This classic account is both an astonishing tale of endurance and a celebration of the peoples and landscapes that exist on the periphery of the modern world.

‘One of the liveliest and most enthralling travel books I have read for years: observant, funny, evocative and illuminating’ MIRANDA SEYMOUR in the Sunday Times
‘Crane’s walk… was a true adventure Clear Waters Rising is a marvellous record of that remarkable journey, and an alluring exposition of a landscape which…continues through his eyes to inspire us with fascination and awe’ MICHAEL ASHER in the Guardian
‘[A] masterpiece that must surely life him into that rare category inhabited by Stevenson, Thesiger, Fleming, Leigh Fermor…a great book about a great walk’ CHRISTOPHER BRASHER in The Times
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This was a forlorn hopeful on my to-Be-Read-Pile, forlorn, in that presently I seem to be devouring supernatural romance like treats, in short like chocolate - and so instead of being read, reviewed, registered and labelled, it'd just been sitting waiting...and waiting for attention.

Now, in a hurried flash of activity, I am getting this ready to sent to my BIL. Or rather it was a hurried flash of activity until I picked this up last night and could not get my head out of it. Am finally giving up, tears of laughter streaming down my face, as I want to get this copy parcelled for a surprise package. Funny and most illuminating about both places I would not thinking of travelling around on my own. Though I'm intrigued to read about them and be illuminated about this man, Nicholas Crane. Within the book cover there is a wealth of prose praise, I don’t think I could do better than to quote these two:

‘Few contemporary travel writers can claim kinship with genuine adventurers, but Crane is one. Clear Waters Rising is written with charm, assurance and considerable powers of description…[A] very impressive book’ PHILIP MARSDEN in the Times Literary Supplement

‘A wonderful book the kind that turns journalism into literature.’ PETER WHITEBROOK in Scotland on Sunday.

As part of an extra unofficial parcel in Uncon-Not-So-Secret-2011 this book is for Mr Flutterbies9. This event is part of the BC UK Yahoo Groups calander of NSS events in 2011.

….planning getting this into the post today, via my local post office, 15 East Norton Place or Edinburgh's main Post Office. Happy Reading Mr Flutterbies9

Hmmm, something went wrong here obviously! Not journalled since arriving here in Somerset yet read and on the available pile for at least a year.

Belated apologies but hopefully this will be on its way to a better home now.

Been on available for far too long and does not deserve to be there. Time to send on its way, so sending to Uncon for Book buffet table.

Happy travels little book.

Received in the post today. Thank you Flutterbies9.

Got it from the book buffet at the Ipswich Unconvention. Thanks for sharing!