... And Far Away

Not really in my wheelhouse - a book about walking in Britain, but it is a Travel book Club publication, which I typically enjoy and therefore collect. My copy is a second edition, published 1948, with a number of accompanying black and white photographs. The author advises that for the second edition, photographs were posed, as initially he travelled alone and therefore was unable to be present in his pictures! There are also a series of hard to read maps -very small and printed in negative - eg black background white text/linework.

Garry Hogg, a broadcaster and (obviously) a walking enthusiast. He shares in this book three journeys undertaken over the course of a year.

Firstly, along Offa's Dyke from Chepstow to Prestatyn, zig-zagging the Welsh / English border. Secondly up the Penninies from Skipton to the Scottish Border, and lastly on England's south-west Limestone Ridge, from the Dorset coast to the Cotswolds.

Garry Hogg shares his thoughts as willingly as his interactions - of which there are many, in regularly requesting a glass of milk or a bed for the night from remote farmhouses and cottages more often than village pubs.

For me this book was never going to threaten five or even four stars. It remains fairly sedate, Mr Hogg is a refined and fairly polite old gent, and for me this book is best described as a harmless and somewhat quaint description of the authors three walks over a year.

2.5 stars, rounded up.