Roly Smith book reviews
described as“ a criminal act of vandalism”, and the new display of its trunk in the Northumberland National Park’ s Sill information centre. But the key question is, what’ s the best way to walk the Wall? The authors make their preference clear.“ We think the views are better W2E, especially when you climb towards the Whin Sill. Moreover,” they add,“ it’ s wise to keep the prevailing wind and possible rain behind you.” But they also fairly argue that public transport makes it easier to start from Newcastle than Bowness, and that the Wall was built from east to west, the way the milecastles are numbered. The 1:50,000 step-by-step mapping by Lovell Johns is supplemented throughout by original fieldwork by the authors, so it can be regarded as totally reliable. But the“ unique” part of the USP of this well-respected Rucksack guide is that it enables the modern walker the choice of either walking with the weather and the views, or following in the sandals of Hadrian’ s legionnaries as they imposed the northernmost boundary of their Empire on what he dubbed the Brittunculi(“ nasty little Brits”).
Trail Blazing the Unknown: An Adventurous Life
Leo Le Bon
Wanderlust Consulting, $ 50, plus $ 10 p & p( pb)
There’ s an unexpected tale of chance and serendipity which lights up this magnificent memoir of the man who has been hailed as the godfather of adventure travel.
Leo Le Bon, newly welcomed as a Guild member and co-founder of the groundbreaking Mountain Travel company, had just returned home to California from one of the first American treks to visit Nepal in 1967. It was this trek which inspired him to co-found Mountain Travel USA in 1968 with Barry Bishop, a firm friend made on the trek. The company was to become a pioneer in adventure travel throughout the world. When Le Bon returned on that initial pioneering trek, he was given a beautiful hand-bound expedition journal written by his non-related namesake, Dr Gustave Le Bon about his visit to Nepal in 1886. The illustrations of“ stunning” engravings of the ancient temples, shrines and palaces in the Kathmandu valley had a profound impact on the author, and he resolved to return to Nepal to compare the art and architecture as recorded by Gustave 150 years ago to that of today. He achieved that ambition in 1984 and the resultant before and after images are a delightful highlight of this fascinating memoir. Leo Le Bon has spent over four decades pioneering adventure travel around the world. From leading expeditions in Nepal, Kenya, Antarctica, and even to the North Pole in a Russian ice-breaker, he could reasonably lay claim to being the person who has redefined the way we explore the world. In this beautifully-illustrated memoir( several of the photographs are by the late Guild committee member John Cleare) he recounts his early life as the son of a Belgian businessman from being the Belgian representative for the British travel company, Thomas Cook, to eventually cofounding Mountain Travel. His personal journey has fed his life-long passion of discovering distant lands, wildlife and remote cultures. But as he explains, he has admirably always tried to do so in a way which does the least harm to the planet.“ By travelling in an adventurous and sustainable way,” he claims,“ we learn, protect, and change the way we live every day.”
111 Places in Cardiff That You Shouldn’ t Miss
Julia Goodfellow-Smith Emons Publishing, £ 13.99( pb)
An explanation should perhaps first be made of that rather clunky title. German publishers Emons explain that in their home city of Cologne, the number 111 means good luck( the opposite, in fact, to cricket, where a score of 111 is considered very unlucky!) Even Cologne’ s annual carnival celebrations begin every year at precisely 11.11am on November 11. This is Llanelli-based Guild secretary Goodfellow-Smith’ s second title in the series, the first covering neighbouring Swansea. And she brings the eye of an experienced local resident to her exploration of some of the more unexpected and fascinating treasures in the Principality’ s capital city. They include the footprints of a 600-tonne, 200-million-year-old sauropodomorpha dinosaur on Penarth beach; the matchsticksized world’ s smallest lovespoon in a craft centre opposite Cardiff’ s gaudily Gothic castle; the grisly-named Dead Man’ s Alley, created to provide a short cut across the middle of the churchyard of St John the Baptist Church in the centre of the city, and the equally grisly sight of the muchtravelled skull of St Teilo, restored to Llandaff Cathedral from Australia in 1994. As the author confirms in her foreword, the vibrant, multicultural city of Cardiff“… has a gruesome and spectacular past, an awesome present and an exciting future.” This is perhaps best exemplified by the spectacular copper-coated façade of the Millennium Centre in the revitalised civic quarter, which she claims could now rival that of any European capital.
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Winter 2025 OUTDOOR FOCUS 9