Painstaking Legwork News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

all sport voice-over: this is bbc news. we will have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. i'm alice morrison, an adventurer and writer. i've cycled across africa and run across the sahara. now i'm on the trail of a mysterious and forgotten arabian civilisation — the nabataeans. are we standing in the birthplace of written arabic? i think i would say that, yes. they were nomads who forged a rich civilisation here in the harsh desert conditions of western arabia from the fourth century bce. they ruled for around three centuries until t...

So that involves walking about 2,000km, which is the distance from here to athens. you know, i want to have a go. absolutely. i know i want you to have a go because i'm tired. 0k! so much like a lawnmower. ijust want you to push it at whatever pace you want to go. just like mowing a lawn. and just dead straight if i can. now, of course, it's very bumpy. do what you can to keep it straight. so now we're collecting data, and what we're doing is essentially like taking a knife and cutting through the ground and seeing everything that's there. this manual unit is much less damaging than using a he...