Millrace Books — The Riddle of Sphinx Rock

The Riddle of Sphinx Rock

by Ronald Turnbull, illustrated by Colin Brash

The life and times of Great Gable

cover	hardback
dimensions	170x120mm, 182 pp, b&w drawings
price	£13.95 (list)	£12.50 (website)
ISBN	1 902173 198

“It’s rare you get a whole book about a British mountain. It’s even rarer to get one that isn’t stuffed with photographs and route diagrams plus a few token words of narrative. Which makes this book — by Trail contributor Ronald Turnbull — about as quirkily unique as you can get. This lovingly produced account of the ‘life’ and times of Great Gable does feature routes, but it’s primarily a collection of fascinating anecdotes, accompanied by atmospheric illustrations by Colin Brash. Essential reading for any Lakeland aficionado.” TRAIL, Feb 2006

The Riddle of Sphinx Rock is an exploration of Great Gable: its eleven main ways for walkers, its scrambles and its climbs. But it’s also a study of what it means to be a mountain in today’s world. Here are Wordsworth and his Wheel of Fells, and Fanny Mercer with her bad alpenstock technique. Here are Westmorland Cairn, the Wadd Holes and Great Hell Gate Pillar. Here are two sorts of stones, the landscape experience called the Sublime, and the blood chemistry of an ascent of Aaron Slack.

Life, death and fellwalking: the great questions all ask themselves on Great Gable. And first among those questions is the Riddle of Sphinx Rock: what did we come up here for anyhow?

“A gleeful blend of wit and erudition.” Tom Waghorn, Manchester Evening News

(To visit author Ronald Turnbull’s website please go to http://home.freeuk.net/ronaldturnbull/books/sphinx.html)