PEAK BAGGING
WAINWRIGHTS by Karen and Dan Parker - BOOK REVIEW
Peak Bagging Wainwrights is a new and richly detailed
guidebook to all the Wainwright fells of The English Lake District. A complete
guide to the 214 summits originally listed by the legendary Alfred Wainwright. It
was his 7 district guidebooks to the Lakeland Fells that have been essential
reading for generations of hillwalkers in The Lake District. This new offering
by Karen & Dan Parker will introduce these hills to a new generation of
fell walkers and runners.
It’s been a few years since I last walked in the English
Lake District. These mountains were some of my first forays into hillwalking,
well over 30 years ago. I vividly remember buying each of the Wainwright
pictorial guidebooks as I worked my way round ‘bagging them’. I don’t actually recall
the phrase bagging several decades ago. I just liked walking in these
hills and picking my own routes off in conjunction with the map. It was the late
Alfred Wainwright guidebooks with his marvellous route drawings that inspired
me to complete all the 214 peaks which he classified. A.W. wrote his seven
pictorial guides to the Lake District fells over an 11-year period, starting in
1952. No doubt that would be unheard of in this present age. The classification
of ‘The Wainwrights’ has slowly emerged over recent years. Bagging the
Wainwrights is, I suppose, the English equivalent to bagging the Munros in
Scotland.
Peak Bagging Wainwrights is a modern, bang up to date
publication which offers a new perspective to a guidebook for these hills.
Karen and Dan Parker have stayed faithful to Alfred Wainwrights classification
of arranging the hills into groups of seven sections that cover the Lakeland area.
Their guidebook gives the reader 45 circular routes to complete them all in an
efficient and logical manner. The authors are experienced fell runners and
although the guide features lots of details for running these hills, it is an equally
great resource for walkers and backpackers who will be going at a more
leisurely pace.
Each of the 45 circular walks is packed with lots of
detailed information along with excellent, clear and large 1:40,000-scale maps
with the route clearly marked on. The mapping is not Ordnance Survey and have no
gridlines overlaid. The text at the beginning of the book rightly points out
that a map and compass should be used in conjunction with the guide. The superbly
detailed descriptions of each walk give plenty of information to get to the
start points and of the route itself. The Parker’s have produced this single
volume guide to encompass a broad range of hill users. These are identified in
the book as walker, trekker, fast packer and trail runner. This is quite a relatively
new concept for a mountain guidebook. At the top of each route description a
table of grid references for start points and individual summits along with longitude
and latitude co-ordinate details are given. If that wasn’t enough information the
What 3 Words location identifier is also in this table. I
personally don’t think there was a need to print the What 3 Words for
each of the start points, summits and carparks throughout the entire guide, if
at all. At the bottom of the route description
there are details of how long each hill should take to walk or run. You can
also download the GPX files for the individual routes.
Throughout the 220 pages there is plenty of other useful
information. Public transport options, accommodation, cafes and pubs nearby are
all included in the individual route pages. This is very useful to make
planning a day out or a longer holiday stay in the area much easier. There are
some excellent photos to accompany the detailed routes. It was nice to see
people featured in many of these images who are walkers, backpackers and
runners which portrays that this guide is for all of these activities.
An attractive, well-designed guide. The 45 routes are nicely
set out along with excellent graphics. The book size is 18cm x 23 cm
Published by Vertebrate Publishing
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