Haynes, in conjunction with Trail have two new mountain books on the shelves, one with UK routes, the other abroad, but are they worth a place on your Christmas list?
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Haynes Mountain Books
Tested
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Price: £16.99
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Weight: 850 grammes
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Features: Haynes
publishing in conjunction with Trail magazine, full colour
throughout, content extracted from Trail magazine, 154 pages
per book,
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Nice pics, classic writing from Trail magazine.
Magazine regulars will have seen it all before.
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The Best Routes On Britain's
Mountains - £16.99
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Just
in case you hadn't noticed, Haynes, publishers of automotive manuals
and hop-up guides to Ford Escorts have been widening their scope.
Their latest books include users guides to the human body, the baby
and these, two mountain-walking publications produced in conjunction
with Trail magazine.
If you're familiar with Trail, then you'll know what to expect,
correction, exactly what to expect, since the first of the two
- The Best Routes on Britain's Mountains - is a collection of
extracts from the pages of the magazine.
That means you get some astonishing full colour photos, a handy
fact file on the mountain complete with Jeremy Ashcroft's familiar
route maps and some deathless prose direct from the word processors
of Trail journalists like Piers Pickard, Guy Procter and the departed
Maria del Carmen Clegg.
Just so there's no confusion, these are actually direct re-prints
of Mountain Guides and route features direct from the magazine, so if
you're a regular reader, there's every chance you'll have seen them
all before, right down to the reader comments and tips from Trail
afficianados.
If you like Trail, you'll love this - then again, you've probably
read it already. It's unquestionably a good-looking book with some
fantastic photography mixed in with a lot of good information,
particularly in the Mountain Guides.
The spread is pretty good, with sections on England, Scotland and
Wales, though whether these really are the 'best' routes as the title
claims, is less clear. Everything in the 'England' section, for
example, is in the Lakes, except of course for Ben Lawers, which is,
erm, in Scotland... Hmmm... An interesting geographical lapse.
Thankfully everything else is in its rightful location and the
Scottish section in paticular, has some stonking routes like the
Aonach Eagach Ridge, the Dubhs Ridge on Skye and the Five Sisters,
though oddly nowt on Ben Nevis, where we thought the CMD Arete or
Ledge Route would have been in with a chance.
All in all a nice outdoors pressie for Christmas. Hopefully, by
now, Ben Lawers will be back where it belongs mind....
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Frontiers - The World's Greatest
Walks - £16.99
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If
you've read the run down of the Best Routes On Britain's Mountains,
you'll have a good idea of what to expect here, ie: reprints of
previous articles from Trail Magazine with some nice, full colour
piccies.
That's a strength, but also, well, let me see: the world's
greatest walks? Erm, the Everest Base Camp Trek, Annapurna Circuit,
Inca Trail, Torrres del Paine, the Tour de Mont Blanc, GR10, the
Pyrennean High Route, Kilimanjaro, GR5 maybe, the Milford Track In
New Zealand perhaps, the Pacific Crest Trail and a load of
others.
Precisely one of these is actually in Frontiers - The World's
Greatest Walks. Which in our book means that the title's a little
misleading. In fact there's just one walk in the Himalaya - the
circuit of Mount Kailash in Tibet - which is plain bonkers.
Call it something like, Some Nice Foreign Mountain Walks You Might
Not Have Heard Of and it makes more sense. There's a nice spread of
lesser known stuff from places like the Tatra, the Trentino Alps,
South Korea, Malawi, Slovenia and the Austrian Tyrol, but not the
great classics you might expect from the title.
You get the impression that someone thought of the title before the
book and the content reads a bit like a desperate trawl through the
Trail overseas features bin for anything that might be vaguely
construed as 'abroad'. As Trail's overseas features have always been
a bit of an afterthought, the book is a bit patchy and one thing it
certainly isn't is a collection of the World's Greatest Walks.
That said, some of the features are pleasant enough with some nice
photos, and might give you inspiration for a trip to a lesser known
area. As with Trail itself though, the domestic book is a far
stronger and more attractive proposition. Frankly we wouldn't bother.
