Kidnap, jailbreak, power, faith, murder, betrayal, scholarship, survival and above all, sheer endurance -- all are themes in Dermot Somers' stories of heroic and historic travels from the mythic legends of prehistory to the dawn of modern Ireland.

With the aid of maps and photographs, Dermot Somers -- mountaineer, Gaelic scholar, TV presenter, and writer -- follows in the footsteps of these epic journeys, revealing the people, the cultures, the times, the places and the echoes surviving in our landscape -- from Art O'Neill's icy grave in the Wicklow mountains to the ringfort-hiding place of the brown bull in the secret valley of the Cooley Mountains.