Book Review: Scottish Hill Tracks by ScotWays

Back in 1977 I bought two little booklets by D.G.Moir called Scottish Hill Tracks Southern Scotland and Scottish Hill Tracks Northern Scotland as part of my planning for a Land’s End to John O’Groats walk the next year. I’d done little walking in Scotland at the time and these booklets proved invaluable. I carried them all the way through Scotland. In future years they were useful for planning TGO Challenge walks.

The booklets were first published in 1947 and then revised for a second edition in 1975. There have been four subsequent editions with the latest just published as a handsome 396 page book by the Scottish Mountaineering Press on behalf of ScotWays (the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society).

Every one of the 350 routes has been resurveyed for this sixth edition with around 130 ScotWays volunteers spending two years checking every one, which involved 7,600km of distance and 194,000 metres of ascent. The result is a book that I think is just as invaluable as the original booklets for anyone interested in walking in Scotland, especially long-distance walking. The wealth of information it contains is astonishing.

Scottish Hill Tracks is beautifully produced, as has come to be expected of the Scottish Mountaineering Press, with attractive maps and many colour photographs. The layout is clear and it’s easy to find the information you want. The routes are divided into 25 geographical sections from the Cheviot Hills to Caithness, each with a brief introduction including landscape, cultural and historical information plus an overview map of all the routes. Each route then starts with the OS Landranger map numbers, grid reference for the start and finish, distance, amount of ascent and descent, high point, and any alternative options.

This a lovely book that as well as practical is wonderful for browsing and daydreaming. I’ve planned several long walks already! I just have one complaint – the weight! At 680g I wouldn’t carry this on a long walk. My original booklets weigh 100g each. The new edition is far more comprehensive of course. Congratulations to all involved in its production.

The book costs £25 and is available from the Scottish Mountaineering Press. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Highland Journal 1.The Making Of A Hillwalker

Tales of the hills are always interesting and this collection is no exception. The author describes his journey from innocent novice asking what a Munro is before ascending his first, Carn Dearg in the Monadhliath, and realising that cotton trousers and a cheap waterproof are not ideal, to experienced climbing Cuillin peaks. The stories involve many others and are entertaining and often humorous. Whilst they're told in a linear fashion this is a book you can dip in and out of as well.

The book is illustrated with the author's drawings and maps and these are delightful. As well as mountain scenes they feature wildlife, skills, and plenty of minutiae. At the end of the description of the Carn Dearg ascent there are sketches of all the gear the author is promising himself.

I discovered this book when given a copy by Marjorie, probably the best bookshop owner anywhere, and owner of Grantown-on-Spey's excellent The Bookmark. The author had been in distributing copies.  If you like it please write about it, she said. Well, I do and I have.

Highland Journal is published by Matador at £15.99

Book Review: Among The Summer Snows by Christopher Nicholson

Summer snow, the remnants of previous years’ snowfalls, is a rarity, found only in a few places high in the Scottish Highlands. Most years a little of this snow lasts right through until the next winter’s snow begins to fall. This year it didn’t, for the first time since 2006 and only for the sixth time in eighty-four years. For it to disappear in 2017, the year this wonderful book by Christopher Nicholson was published, is somewhat ironic as one of the main themes of the book is about loss and the symbolic importance of summer snow to the author’s well-being. As I finished reading the book I wondered how different it would have been if Nicholson had searched out the last summer snow this year rather than last before writing the book. On his final visit to Garbh Choire in the Cairngorms late in the summer of 2016 he writes ‘I needed to know if the snow had survived’ and then when he sees the last patches ‘oh good, good, good, a thousand times good’.

Nicholson’s fascination with summer snow and the significance it came to have for him are the core of the book. Mixing accounts of his trips to find the snow, stories of summer snow from the past, and personal reminiscences that are both sad and uplifting this is an unusual and thought-provoking book and one to savour slowly, taking it in gradually, rather as the summer snow slowly melts away. Beautifully written, it is both elegiac and optimistic, a meditation on life and death. The descriptions of the snow patches are wonderfully detailed, the determination involved in reaching them familiar to anyone who walks in the hills.

One of the best outdoor books I’ve read this year – and it has been a good year for them – Among The Summer Snows is, I think, destined to become a classic of mountain literature. Superb.

Book Review: The Last Hillwalker by John D. Burns

Sometimes a book comes along that captures the essence of what it means to love mountains and to love being in mountains. This is such a book. In it the author describes his journey from bumbling would-be hillwalker and long-distance walker through rock climbing, alpine mountaineering, winter climbing, and mountain rescue team member to disillusion with the hills and finally a rekindling of the spirit with bothy hunting. Throughout a love of nature and wild places shines through. Along with mordant humour and a cast of friends, acquaintances and chance meetings that enliven the stories, whether it’s as a novice on the Pennine Way or ice climbing in Glencoe. The author laughs at himself and his misadventures and pokes gentle fun at friends – there’s nothing malicious here.

The disillusion is with climbing rather than with the hills. ‘I no longer believe’ writes Burns. Instead he turns to the stage, first as a stand-up comedian then as a playwright and actor with his own one-man show about occultist and mountaineer Aleister Crowley. (Later he writes and performs another one-man play Mallory: Beyond Everest, which I’ve seen twice – it’s excellent). Looking for another writing project he decides on a book about his outdoor life, ‘a farewell to the hills’. But that’s not what this book is as his hill life is restored with a love of bothies and then a decision to walk the Pennine Way again, forty years later. The book ends there, tantalisingly, but on a positive note. There is more joy in the hills to come, more adventures, more stories. You can read, listen and even watch some of them on Burn’s website - www.johndburns.com.

The Last Hillwalker is well-written and entertaining. Beneath the humour and the excitement there are passionate feelings and self-analysis. The author is a man who has thought carefully and deeply about the hills and his place in them. Having raced through the book once, carried away by the adventures and the desire to know what happens next, I’ve read it again, this time noting what the author is going through, what lies behind the tales. I’m sure I’ll read it again. It’s one of the best hill books I’ve read in many years. 

 

The title? It puzzled me and isn’t explained until the end when the author meets a young man called Alec and tells him he thinks hillwalking is dying out and the hills will soon be empty. Alec doesn’t agree. After he’s gone Burns thinks ‘maybe I just met the last hillwalker’. Happily I think he’s wrong but that’s no reason not to read this wonderful book. 

This review first appeared in the October issue of The Great Outdoors