More Wilderness Walks: Twelve Great Walks in Scotland Book

Cameron McNeish and Richard Else have struck on a rich vein. More Wilderness Walks is another set of excursions which are sufficiently demanding and extended to justify them pondering on the meaning of life. Yet they are still within the compass of those keen hill walkers who will resolve to prolong the usual weekend ramble into something infinitely more satisfying. When they do so they have a choice of which of these authors echoes to carry in their head. McNeish's walks are accompanied by relevant histories of Rob Roy or the Black Douglas and bits of Walter Scott poetry or bothy ballad depending if its the Trossachs or the Borders he is tramping about. A more breathless voice comes from Else who indignantly exposes current-day landowners for failing to observe nationally agreed guidelines on access to the hills. But both clearly believe that in the solitude of wilderness you are in touch with the spirit of a place--an accompaniment of "human emotions bound up in the ether of a place" which pervade its ambience for centuries. More Wilderness Walks is not a guide book by comparison, say, with the Highland Walks of Hamish MacInnes--there are accompanying maps but no detailed descriptions of route markers. Instead, it makes you want to walk or immerses you in the pleasure of memories of past efforts. --Kevin DunionRead More