BOOK REVIEWS
Scotland’s Far West; Walks on Mull and Ardnamurchan
By Denis Brook & Phil Hinchliffe
Published by Cicerone Press 2005. Paperback. 192 pages. Full colour. Price £10. ISBN 1-85284-407-8.
Walking guide covering Mull, Ardnamurchan, Morven, Sunart and Ardgour provides 34 day walks in a relatively quiet and scenic part of Scotland. There is a lot to go at here from coastal walks to the area’s only Munro - Ben More on Mull. In addition some nice historic and information boxes provide background notes to keep you occupied- perhaps whilst sheltering from the rain!
The routes are illustrated using excerpts from OS Landranger maps. These take the form of narrow strips about 1 km either side of the walk, but an additional purchase of the individual maps would still be advised.
A frustrating tendency is for many of the walks (more than half) to start and finish at different points, so you may need a willing driver or an enthusiasm for hitch-hiking to enjoy them as described. Also, it was a surprise to see that Garbh Bheinn, arguably the areas best mountain, is left out of the guide with the author’s comment “……it should be quite possible to climb……. although we have not checked the routes”. That’s a strange omission.
In general, longer remote hikes in the area are left to the imagination with the guide tending to document walks on existing paths. The book does reflect the area’s wonderful diversity though, with an ever present backdrop of beautiful coast and island scenery which is guaranteed to put a spring in the step of even the most jaded Munro bagger and useful if you are holidaying in the area to provide lots of additional interesting alternatives to ascending the peaks.
Brian Dickson
North West Highlands
Scottish Mountaineering Club Hillwalkers’ Guide
by Dave Broadhead, Alec Keith and Ted Maden
Published by Scottish Mountaineering Trust 2004. Hard Back. 352 pages. Price £22. ISBN 0907521-81-9.
The book aims to describe all 102 Munros, 102 Corbetts and 84 Grahams on the Scottish mainland north-west of the Great Glen, with an outline of routes on the principal hills, background information, and a starting point for topics of particular interest.
There is a chapter on each sector, starting with simplified contour maps and lists of summits. The layout uses boxes on sundry topics ranging from the Highland midge to Prince Charlie to paths in Knoydart. Another large coloured box is dropped into each chapter on Access and Transport, Accommodation and Information, and Maps. This may be a fashionable form of presentation but I think it would be better incorporated into the text in appropriately headed sections.
The route descriptions omit distance, height gained and times. I found difficulty in following many of them, for example on Liathach. In such cases, confusion could have been avoided by describing the basic route and the rest separately.
There are some serious omissions. Stac Pollaidh has a built path round both ends: the obvious tour, using these paths and ascending the ridge from the north, is well covered in Nick Williams’ pocket guide – the obvious comparison; but, in a welter of other information, the westerly path is not described here. However, I was pleased to see indicated the less exposed way up the highest pinnacle!
The route round the great arc of the Eastern Fannaichs (from Fannaich Lodge: use a cycle) is sadly omitted. This could be the basic route with shorter routes added. Some routes are well treated eg on Meal Fuar-mhonaidh above Loch Ness.
The book is printed on quality paper with good colour photos. Being too heavy for a rucksack (over 1Kg) it would have been better to use a larger ‘coffee-table’ size, with room to develop a more coherent layout.
Mike Newbury
Lowland Outcrops Rock & Ice Climber’s Guide
Published by the SMC 2005. Soft Back. 464 pages. 16 colour photos. Price £20. ISBN 0-907251-84-0.
This latest edition appears after a ten year gap and is in the now familiar larger format of the new SMC guidebook series. Covering the well established crags as well as introducing a sprinkling of new venues, the guide boasts some great climbing within easy reach of the Central Belt, out to far flung sea cliffs and mountains of Galloway.
Near Glasgow, the unique Dumbarton Rock has lots of high quality bouldering and exciting routes on its low friction black basalt. The new guide does it justice with boulder photo diagrams and a clearer lay out. The other traditional western areas such as Craigmore, The Whangie, Loudon Hill and Ben An, are all included. There are also plenty of new routes and crags in the west – nearly 200 new routes on slate in the Rosneath peninsula!
Across the Central Belt, the dolerite quarries of Rosyth, Auchinstarry, Cambusbarron and Ratho provide plenty of fun through the grades with enough gems to make each worth a few visits. One of the more aesthetic crags is the sunny sea cliff of The Hawkcraig at Aberdour featuring amenable grades, sticky rock and classics like the VS of Pain Pillar.
Galloway has seen a big increase in routes, particularly sea cliffs but also inland in places such as the Dungeon Hill. The recording of winter climbs here has justified the inclusion of ‘ice’ in the book title. I had an amusing read through the sea cliff sections where new routers have gone wild with route names using sea-faring puns in the vein of ‘Hissing of Summer Prawns’ and ‘Krill Bill’ joining old gems such as ’Squid Vicious’ and ‘Silence of the Clams’.
I have attempted to check the book out for some of the grading anomalies of the past. At Cambusbarron Fourth Quarry, ‘The Doobie Brothers’ deservedly now gets E1 (from HVS), and is joined by a fair number of new lines consolidating this crag as a worthwhile evening venue. At Auchinstarry, it was surprising to see that both ‘Midas Touch’ and ‘After the Grave Dig’ have been downgraded (in error in my opinion) and both are very serious for their grade. I also noticed a mistake in the diagram for the Backwall Area at Auchinstarry which has the climbs numbered differently to the route descriptions. All things considered though, the guide seems remarkably accurate.
Photo’s are up to the usual high standard although I have a minor quibble that the cover shot (Achemine E9, Dumbarton) is a bit dark and doesn’t quite leap out at you as did the previous version’s ‘Nijinski’ cover.
If you live near Central and Southern Scotland or you just pass through the area for trips up north (or south), then this book definitely belongs in your sack.
Brian Dickson
The Joy of Climbing
Terry Gifford’s Classic Climbs
By Terry Gifford
Published by Whittles Publishing 2004. 192 pages. Paper back. Colour and black & white photos.
Price £19.95. ISBN: 1-904445-06-3.
Terry Gifford’s book is a collection of short essay’s about the fun, easier side of rock climbing rather than the desperate ones that usually make it to print. Climbs up to about HVS are included and as such it has the potential to appeal to a fair chunk of the rock climbing population. The locations are mainly classic ones in the British Isles such as Wisdom Buttress-Beinn Lair, Red Slab-Rannoch Wall, Ardverikie Wall, Overhanging Bastion-Lakes and Diamond Solitaire-Lundy, but the essays also take in climbing in Europe and the US with Tuolumne Meadows-US, Calpe-Spain, Crete and Malta.
I find there is a bit of a thrill in reading someone else’s account of climbs that you have already done and I found those chapters the most enjoyable. Also, Terry makes no pretence at being a star climber and he manages to conjure up interesting and detailed accounts of not too difficult climbs such as Scratch Arête at Tremadog (HVS)……
‘Under pressure I improvised a completely innovative semi-critical sub-pumped tension move to delay stepping up. That is, I put my knee on’
There is a presumption throughout that the reader is familiar with climbing terminology using terms such as ‘MOAC’, ‘wires’, ‘MacInnes (1971)’ (referring to Hamish MacInnes guidebooks) and climbing grades without explanation so you might find it a bit difficult to follow if you are a beginner. That seems a bit of a lost opportunity as many of the routes described would be great inspirations for those starting out.
A word of warning though, the author likes his poetry and after attempting the first few prose intermissions I found that they didn’t really do anything for me!
That said, this is an unusually quirky, stylish collection of essays on climbs that you may well recognize and has much to recommend it.
Brian Dickson
need to know?
By Geoffrey Budworth
Published by Collins 2005. Paperback. 192 pages. Full colour. Price £9.99. ISBN 0-00-719979-1
Every knot you may possibly need to know about for climbing, sailing, fishing, tying bikes and canoes to car carriers and even for tying up your horse. Clear diagrammatic photo diagrams explain it all. Separated into these various headings, climbing does not appear, although it could be regarded as ‘Life Support’! But you will find it lacking in the more advanced knots required for advanced climbing situations. Good all the same for general use.
Kevin Howett
Glen Nevis Bouldering
By Tom Ballard
Published by Tom Ballard 2005. Paperback. Black & White diagrams. 40 pages. Price £6.95.
Although the climbing at Scotland’s pre-eminent roadside outcrop venue has always been documented, the bouldering on the many superb big boulders has not – until now. Tom and his son live locally and have spent the last few years working their way through a multitude of problems, some new, some well established. With the explosion of interest in bouldering, he has decided to bring out an interim guide to the 600+ problems that range from the very easy to the very hard. Although it is rudimentary in design and imagery (it has no inspiring photos) it is the only source of definitive information and does get you to where the action is. Enjoy.
Kevin Howett
The Munro Almanac
By Cameron McNeish
Published by The Inn Pinn 2005. Hard Back. 145 pages. Price £7.99. ISBN 1-897784-77-5.
This is Cameron’s Revised 3rd edition of his mini guide to the Munros. Described “as essential as a compass when out on the hill”, it has been updated with Gaelic pronunciation, access points for the main routes, and with stalking information for each set of hills (either the relevant Hillphone or estate phone numbers) and is easy to shove in a sac, but don’t do it at the expense of your compass.
Kevin Howett
Cicerone continue to produce a seemingly never ending number of walking, trekking and mountaineering guides to all the most popular venues in the world. In a continuing series of plastic-backed full-colour pocket-sized handy guides that are both good to read, good to look at and have all the information you will ever need for planning your trip and whilst on it, they have added the following:
Kev Reynolds explores the eastern end of Switzerland near St Moritz, The Engadine (Piz Badile); Gillian Price follows the ‘GTA’, the grand trek of the Italian side of the Alps, from near the Med to the Swiss border near Mont Rosa; Hilary Sharp discovers 50 of the best walks in the Mont Blanc area and a few multi-day treks such as the traverse of the Aiguilles Rouges and the Italian Val Ferret; further afield, and talking more substantial mountains, Jim Ryan gives you all the information you need for ‘the highest trek in the world’ – Aconcagua – and describes a whole load of other good treks in the area, whilst Alexander Stewart comprehensively covers the trek to Africa’s highest point, Kilimanjaro.
