In 1879, Bob Carlisle shot to fame by pushing a wheelbarrow from Land’s End to John O’Groats and back. His impressive feats of ‘wheelbarrow pedestrianism’ were carried out in the name of temperance, before Carlisle unexpectedly turned his back on the cause. In the fourth episode in our new series on this larger-than-life character of the Victorian age, David Musgrove explores Carlisle’s athletic feats, speaking to sports historian Dave Day and temperance historian Annemarie McAllister to put his achievements in a historical context.

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Authors

Dr David MusgroveContent director, HistoryExtra.com

David Musgrove is content director of the HistoryExtra.com website and podcast, plus its sister print magazines BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed. He has a PhD in medieval landscape archaeology and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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