CLIMBING DOWN

Graham Wilsons Climbing Down, selected as a Travel Book of the Week in The Guardian, features long distance walks in the Scottish, Welsh and English hills — but in manageable chunks. Wilson makes an entertaining companion; once he was fit enough for the Bob Graham Round, now hes the victim of a crumbling hip. So, he breaks the walks into sections and, instead of calling on a shuttle-service of friends with cars, takes to public transport. The walks include an Alternative Snowdon Horseshoe, a Scottish Coast to Coast and the Yorkshire Centurion, as well as several Peak District rounds. And a new, gentler activity is proposed for the compulsive list-ticker: island-bagging. Wilsons experiences are recounted in his own inimitable style, with the usual eccentric digressions into topi such as coffin roads and cut-hopping, Munros and mobile phones, solo climbing and slippered pigs. Wonderfully illustrated with drawings by Gerry Dale.