Big Trails: Great Britain & Ireland: The best long-distance trails: 1

I bought this as a gift for a family member and I was happy with the book it looks great the pictures are fantastic and it’s a decent size and made a lovely gift - recipient was thrilled and I will purchase the others in the collection for future gifts

Enough detail to start planning or inspire something to do and that suited me. Great to promise yourself to find the time. If you want detailing of these routes you would need to look elsewhere. Let us see more of Ireland in the future, too neglected in books. However, getting to and from some parts of Ireland by public transport is a nightmare. However the people, bus and taxi drivers are generally good, helpful and give you great local info. As long paths are not normally circular, need someone to detail more about getting to start points and extraction from end points using public transport.

A basic intro with useful info to wet your appetite to the national trails.

This is a lovely book to use for inspiration to start panning a holiday or adventure and to decide if it is the right route for you. I would buy this for a friend who had started or was looking to start long distance walking trips, rather than a really experienced walker. The book is not enough detail alone to walk one of these trails, but a companion footprint map is referenced for each trail for more detailed planning and for navigational use on the walk.At a glance, this book provides an overview of 25 walking trails across Great Britain and Ireland varying in length from 100km to 1000km. Each trail has an overview, written in a way that makes you want to get right out there walking, a very concise and easy to understand summary containing the need to know information for making a quick analysis if this is a route for you, a couple of colour photos and a map of the entire route scaled to fit one page.The popular trails such as the Pennine Way, South West Coast Path and West Highland Way are included, as are some lesser known trails such as younger Cambrian Way (for which I was intrigued to read that the Brecon Beacon’s National Park banned sales of the guide book). All the information you expect from a guidebook is present – start and end points, travel and logistics, when to go and what to take. I would have preferred that the trails were in geographical order rather than alphabetical, however, the contents include a map with all the trails.The part of this book that has intrigued me the most, is the section on how to estimate how long each trail will take to complete. A scale is used with estimated times for a walker, trekker, runner and even a fast packer (someone running carrying all their camping kit). Though, looking at the numbers provided in the introduction, personally I would give the trail runners and fast packers a bit longer to descend hills (I for one, cannot descend hills twice the speed I can ascend them). The estimated running time for the West Highland Way for example is 20hours over three days, which for the average runner seems quite ambitious considering that’s is nearly 5mph pace for 31miles a day, three days in a row and across quite technical underfoot terrain in sections.I have really enjoyed reading this book and have several new walks I want to visit now!

A nice collection of long distance trails. Contains a section of pro's and cons. Very useful

Very much a walk summary, useful but not detailed

This book is amazing, very informative, brilliant book.

good quality item would 100% reccomend