Just out, first volume in a two book set aimed at Corbett baggers.
New from Cicerone Press is volume one of Walking The Corbetts by Brian Johnson, a guide to peaks between 2,500ft and 2,999ft to the south of the Great Glen.
There is of course a sort of arbitrary lunacy to the whole Munro-bagging obsession, witness the regular remeasuring and promotion or demotion of marginal Munros. And it is, of course, totally ridiculous that someone might ignore a strikingly beautiful mountain in favour of a much less interesting one simply because it doesn't top the 'magic' 3000ft mark.
'The Most Interesting Routes'
Of course Corbett-bagging has the potential to be just as silly, but encouragingly, the blurb for this new walking guide says 'The routes described here are not necessarily for the peak bagger who just wants the shortest and easiest way up the mountain; they’re for the walker who wants the best, most interesting route up the wildest glen or along the most dramatic ridges'.
Which makes sense to us. The book covers the 112 Corbetts to the south of the Great Glen with 95 routes including the Southern Uplands, Southern Highlands, Cairngorms and also the islands of Jura and Arran. It's divided into 11 sections designed to be walkable in a fortnight each.
Each route starts off with brief overiew giving distance, ascent, time, an idea of difficulty with any specific hazards, access details followed by a concise but - we reckon, sitting here in the Peak - probably adequate route description given that each route also comes with a 1:100,000 map based on Ordnance Survey data.
Along with all that, the general introduction covers a bit of background, advice on when to go, explanations of bothying and so on.
It's always hard to review a guidebook without using it, but we can tell you that it's nicely designed, organised and laid out and we reckon it'd make a good buy not just for aspiring ticklisters, but anyone who wants to look beyond the Munro obsession next time they're in Scotland.
The book has 340 colour, paper-backed pages and retails for £16.95 in printed form. More information at www.cicerone.co.uk/product/detail.cfm/book/652/title/walking-the-corbetts-vol-1-south-of-the-great-glen
