Not the West Highland Way by Ronald Turnbull
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Not the West Highland Way by Ronald Turnbull, Published by Cicerone
UK Price: £12.95
Pros: Great idea, beautifully executed
Cons: It's a pity they have to charge £12.95
Verdict: One of the great Scottish mountain walking books
Rating: 
Available from:Amazon.co.uk
Product Review
This is a fantastic book of routes for walkers looking for more rewarding Scottish trails. But Cicerone's new book ‘Not the West Highland Way' is built round a difficult idea: that the famous West Highland Way is an unadventurous walkers' ‘motorway' through some great Scottish countryside.
The book aims to take walkers, trekkers and hikers off this easy, well-marked popular long-distance trail and into the very exciting landscape it passes through instead.
The West Highland Way is a pretty good long distance trail but Ron is right, it is largely a converted old road and runs close to a busy main road at times and avoids the mountains.
So instead of skirting Ben Lomond along the flat path on the shore of Loch Lomond, here you get a walk right up to the summit. Instead of following the old military road across Rannoch Moor there are walking routes up the peaks of Black Mount, like Creise, overlooking Rannoch. And so on, all the way up to Ben Nevis, where Ron Turnbull takes you on the spectacular walk I love, to approach the Ben, not up the over-populated tourists' ‘Pony Track', but around the North Face and the breathtaking CMD Arrete ridge walk and scramble.
So the book is a selection of 24 more interesting and exciting walking trails between Glasgow and Fort William, above or alongside the WHW. There are inspiring colour photos and high quality OS maps but what really lifts this great walking book up to the very summit of the hundreds of rival books out there is Ron Turnbull's colourful and knowledgeable style.
There are just enough adjectives, anecdotes and asides to make this a readable book in its own right. I started skimming the pages for the review then found myself engrossed and two hours later I was still reading his tips for camping out in the wild and planning my next adventure.
So ‘Not the West Highland Way' is a mainly collection of practical highland walks ranging from a few hours to several days but it is also packed with other information and observations about walking, not just in Scotland, but anywhere. It's lovely stuff.
The walks are divided into three sections: the biggest is for day walks that start and finish around the West Highland Way, then there are the multi-day trips (stating with very easy two-day trips for beginners and building up to an 11-day expedition) and finally a selection of Highland walks around the same territory but not even touching the West Highland route.
I'm already planning which ones to do first...
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