Good Walks Guide

A volume of 150 walks in Britain, this is a republished full-colour version of the Good Walks Guide ring-bound edition. That in itself drew on some of the 394 walks from two earlier guides I edited published by Which? Books/Hodder and Stoughton (the Town and Country Walks Guide, and another book called the Good Walks Guide).
Most of these hundreds of walks were routes I devised myself, or adapted ideas sent in by Holiday Which? readers. As the first Good Walks Guide project developed, I evolved a concept of a Good Walk - what makes one route stand out above all others in a vicinity. A host of ideas came into play - such as:

Walking into the view ( not away from it)
Having a pub about half-way round
Routing the walk so that it has varies from one mile to the next
Keeping a highlight of the route for late on
Ensuring the major physical demands of the walk don't happen too near the end
Choosing a route that can be followed by someone with no particular navigational skills

The fieldwork acquainted me with the British countryside. I walked in every county and got to know every national park, and acquired my own favourites. I experienced at first hand the regional differences in the quality of the footpath network. I improved my skills in map-reading and giving clear, unambiguous directions. For the original Good Walks Guide and Town and Country Walks Guide I drew all the maps based on my field notes. For the later Good Walks Guide versions my maps became the basis of computer-generated colour maps.
In early days, the Good Walks Guide had links to the Good Pub Guide, which cross-referred to walks passing recommended pubs. Years later, I still meet enthusiasts of both books, some of whom have walked scores of routes from my guides.

Based on my knowledge of walks in Britain, I have designed routes and written descriptions for over a hundred walks for Allan and Bertram's Walkabout Britain Calendar, published every year since 1992.