Walking the Wainwrights: With Stuart Marshall

Loved it great walks very detailed information.

I needed a book which would detail the ideal routes in bite size format with easy reference to dip in and out of the book for my planned walks. This book highlights the AW fells at the start of each walk in the form of a summary. It is an easy to use quick dip guide. I read it everyday when planning my walks as I travel to the area every six weeks to undertake these walks. Many of the walks are navigated by the free walking tours from the Tourist Info Centre. The fells can be a dangerous place to walk and care must be taken to keep to the designated pathways or staircases as some describe. The fells must be treated with respect, unprepared walkers could easily become lost or disorientated if they do not carry a map and compass as a basic. This is photo of our walk up Catbells. Be sure to back up these walks with viewing the walks on utube. Getting as much information about the walk is the secret to a happy walk.

I’ve done a few of these routes now and generally find the book really helpful HOWEVER in order to map all the peaks into circular routes there are several routes that involve walks across moorland/bog/open ground with no path at all. At first I assumed that due to the popularity of completing Wainwrights there would at least be a faint path but no - on more than one occasion I’ve had to resort to GPS tracking across faceless ground. The book lulls you into a false sense of security by showing dotted lines on routes but in reality often it’s just “find your way from X to Y”.Now that I’ve learnt my lesson I still find the book useful but it needs to be considered as more of a suggestion than a hard and fast guide.So I would recommend the book but with a caveat that you need to have mapped your route on an OS map beforehand and take GPS and/or compass along with you.

I use this along side my OS map routes and walk the Wainwrights in 36 walks.Always good to have a backup with you.

All as expected

The title gives it away: if you want a book that gets you around all 214 Wainwrights, this will do the trick.

This is a really well organised and succinct guide book. Each walk is presented on a pair of facing pages so you have the sketch map and the walk description together. The book has useful and interesting background information of interest to the walker but the author never looses sight of the primary purpose of the book - describing the 36 walks in a convenient way.Other guidebooks I have are full of glossy pictures to entice you but this sticks to the point. I like that. I have decided to do the walks and so need no persuading. Glossy images just get in the way of the information I want.I open my copy at the right position in a clear ziplock bag as weather protection, never need to open the bag on the walk and carry it as a reference.

Looks a good book not used yet