Day Walks in Snowdonia 04/05/2012

The latest offering from Sheffield-based independent publisher, Vertebrate Publishing, is the guidebook Day Walks in Snowdonia.

When you open the book you'll quickly realise the cover description of '20 circular routes in North Wales' is a bit of a misnomer - in a good way! Two bonus routes involving easy scrambling are included at the end: the Bochlwyd and Snowdon Horseshoe.

The book fits easily into a rucsac lid or large pocket and for any hillwalker new to the region it has all the popular classics: Snowdon by the Pyg Track, the Glyderau loop from Ogwen, the southern Carneddau and so on. The author, well-known outdoor scribe, Tom Hutton, even includes the Nantlle Ridge, which is actually a linear walk but clearly just too good for him to bear leaving out.

Concise route descriptions, navigation notes and 1;25000 Ordnance Survey mapping make it easy to plan your day. All of the chosen walks are between 9 km and 19 km in length.

If you've already done a fair amount of exploring the ridges and cwms of Snowdonia then this book will serve to highlight some excursions you may have overlooked and hopefully inspire you to visit some of the less well trodden hills in the southern half of the national park. Hands up who has actually been up Rhobell Fawr or escaped the beaten track to visit Moel Ysgyfarnogod?

To say you'd done all the routes in this book would really mean you had savoured the best that Snowdonia has to offer a hill walker. Priced at only £12.95, with lots of colour photos that'll make you want to pull your boots on and head straight out of the door, there's little reason not to buy it.

The last word is best left to Tom, writing in his introduction: "It’s sometimes said that Snowdonia is Wales in miniature but in my opinion this fails to do justice to the grandeur of the largest and most spectacular of the principality’s national parks."

"It would be closer to the truth to describe Snowdonia as Wales in caricature – the features are the same but somehow the small seems smaller and the large, larger. The flora appears more delicate and fragile, the rivers seem faster and more tumultuous, the ridges are sharper and narrower and of course, the mountains are higher. To me, walking among these mountains is as much a sensory experience as a physical one."

Day Walks in Snowdonia is available from book shops, outdoor shops and direct from www.v-publishing.co.uk 

Topic: Hillwalking in Snowdonia, Day Walks in Snowdonia, Circular Walking Routes in North Wales.

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