Central Fells (Lakeland Fellranger) (Paperback)

The book is a handy size for taking on hikes and has a plastic cover, which makes sense given the wetness of the Lakes. It also has a very useful panorama view from each hilltop which makes it easy to identify the hills around you, plus it makes you want to take the book up the hill so that you know what are looking at. It also has good quality photographs, not works of art, but highly illustrative of the area and very useful for identifying which areas a walker might want to check out.

Some things I do not like about the book.

One, the "easy-to-use" format is anything but easy to use. If you are anything like me, you would first want to look at the book sections that cover areas that immediately interest you. Approaching the book that way will leave you bewildered. It took me three attempts to figure out how to use the book - I was only successful after reading the introduction very carefully to understand the colour coding and numbering system used to differentiate between hills, starting points, etc. Don't skimp on the first part of the book. The rest only makes sense if you have internalised the format.

Second, the book gives you no guidelines to how long it might take to make a particular walk. As the author himself points out, walking in the Lakes is a highly individual activity and so it is hard to define how long a walk can take. But I would welcome a guide of some sort: is a walk a five hour walk or a one hour walk? Distances are given in each instance but 1 mile can take a short time or very long time depending on the terrain.

Three, as a family man with two kids, I am not given any help as to whether a particular walk can be attempted with kids or not. The author does dedicate his book to his children, noting that the Lakes can be enjoyed through the generations. All the more I would have welcomed some input on walking with a family in tow.

Finally, the text would have been much more readable if it had been properly edited. It reads like the writing of an enthusiastic amateur but the publisher Collins should really have cleaned it up.

Overall, I feel I have been more negative than necessary but I thought you should know about the shortcomings of the book. What does come across really well is the author's deep love for the Lakes. For me, that alone makes the book worth acquiring.

However there are some drawbacks. The main one being the poor level of proof reading. There are so many errors that you begin to lose confidence in the information being provided; this is a serious flaw that could even have safety implications.

Also it is often difficult to see the routes being described in context. I have found it better to plan the route using a map and then see what Mark Richards has to say about it rather than to use the guide book first.

Finally, it can be difficult to navigate through the books as some routes have comments like "For route 4 consult Great End route 7 page 110", when you are on page 230. This combined with typographical errors and omissions makes the books frustrating at times.

Still well worth buying though.