Book reviews Roly Smith
Walking the Shropshire Way
John Gillham
Cicerone, £14.95 (pb)
S
hropshire is a much underrated
county. Although the
Shropshire Hills, centred on
the Church Stretton valley, were
described by local novelist Mary
Webb as “inviolable, taciturn” and
“evil,” they nevertheless attract
hundreds of walkers from the West
Midlands and further afi eld every
weekend.
And this excellent and long-
awaited guide to a new, rationalised
180-mile circular route links the
delectable south Shropshire hills
of the Wrekin, the Stiperstones and
Wenlock Edge to the “meres and
mosses” north of the River Severn
in the relatively unvisited north of
the county.
It’s been worth waiting for. As
Audrey Menhinick, chair of the
Shropshire Way Association says in
her foreword, Gillham was the ideal
person to write the guide, given
his love for and knowledge of the
county.
10 Outdoor focus | spring 2020
Before the guide was produced,
the original route based on
Shrewsbury boasted no less than 32
diff erent loops, with signposts often
confusingly pointing in three or
four diff erent directions, and there
was often no distinction between
the main route and the loops.
The only shame with the new
guide is that the main route does not
include the reigning summit of the
Long Mynd itself. The author admits
that the Stretton Hills, including the
Long Mynd and Caer Caradoc, had to
be omitted in favour of the hillfort-
topped Wrekin, the jagged quartzite
spires of the Stiperstones and the
Silurian limestones of Wenlock
Edge.
But experienced hillwalker as
he is, Gillham has wisely covered
this disappointing omission by the
inclusion of the exciting 20-mile
Stretton Skyline Walk, which takes
in the Mynd, Caradoc, the Hope
Bowdler Hills and the Lawley.
This rationalised Shropshire
Way visits much of the county’s
most beautiful and interesting
countryside, and this attractive new
guide is the perfect companion.
Walking on the Azores
Paddy Dillon
Cicerone, £16.95 (pb)
P
rolifi c globe-trotting
guidebook author Paddy
Dillon turns his attention to
the remote volcanic islands of the
Azores, fl oating in the middle of
the North Atlantic, a third of the
distance between Europe and North
America, for his latest off ering.
And in these 70 varied and
sometimes challenging walking
routes, Dillon gets to the heart of
these island peaks, which actually
represent the tops of enormous,
undersea volcanoes. The highest,
the 7,710ft/2,350m Pico on the
island of Pico, is actually also
the highest summit in Portugal,
which still owns the nine-island
archipelago.
The Azores lie close to the
junction of three major continental
plates and are designated as a
UNESCO Global Geopark because
of their international geological,
cultural and biodiversity
importance.