Last updated 21:13, Thursday, 01 May 2008

Great Mountain Days in the Lake District by Mark Richards. Cicerone. £16.99. If you laid all the books on walking in the Lake District end to end you could pave all the well-trodden routes over the fells and the morass of soggy paper might do something to halt the erosion caused by the relentless tread of boots.

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Wish you were here? The Mosedale fells from the head of Deep Ghyll, one of the fine photographs illustrating Great Mountain Days in the Lake District by Mark Richards

Walking books have several possible purposes. One is simply to tell you where the walks are and to show you the route and give a few directions in case you get lost. These should be compact and light-weight and, experienced walkers would add, waterproof as well.

A second kind of book might seek to enrich the walk by not simply telling you where to go, but by offering interesting details of the country you are walking through, opening your eyes to the nature and the history of the world about you.

I’d welcome a really detailed book like this – one that brought to life the history of the hills, offered a close understanding of the habitats walked through and a real sense of the ghosts of miners and farmers, climbers and tourists that had tramped the hills in earlier days.

A third might serve as a memory, a recollection in tranquillity of hills traversed and storms and sunlight endured, a fine photographic book with evocative descriptions that call up the magic of the fells from an armchair.

And a fourth might be a song of praise to the hills, a book in which an individual communicates his passion and obsession with the fells he has spent a lifetime coming to know.

Mark Richards’s latest book is ambitious enough. It offers 50 classic routes exploring the Lakeland Fells. And he knows what he’s talking about.

Mark has loved the fells all his life. Alfred Wainwright recognised his passion for the hills and he had the rare distinction of being a regular house-guest of that doyen of hill-walkers.

He is also the author of the definitive series Lakeland Fellranger Guides as well as walking books for other parts of the country.

The book has an enthusiastic introduction by none other than Sir Chris Bonington. He says, “Although I have climbed in many of the world’s greatest mountain ranges, how ever magnificent and high or wild they might have been I have never found anywhere that compares with the English Lake District and always revel in its beauty on my return.”

And this beauty is captured throughout the book in the superb photographs.

Strongly-lit, often autumnal colours, the tawny flanks of the fells, the deep blues of the tarns, these are photographs obtained on those exceptional magical days when the light makes the landscape a living creature.

The walks are well supported with good OS reproductions and there is useful but not over-fussy guidance on the route.

And Mark is a passionate and informed guide.

Unfortunately the scope of the book does not let him step out as he might wish. Talking about the Bowscale Fell-Blencathra walk, he is only able to tell us that Mungrisdale was named after an early British missionary, St Mungo, and that Glenderamackin is a corruption of the British “glyn moch” and means “valley where the swine forage”.

I want to know a lot more, about the limekilns and Bannerdale Crags and the “more ancient rocks”

The enthusiasm is there too, but somewhat muted, reduced to the passing adjective, the generalised epithet, rather than the strong, personal response.

Bowscale Tarn is in “a wild hollow”. The view from Blencathra is “stupendous”, but he does have time to linger over the Back o’Skidda where he sees “considerable tracts of heather lending rich mosaic tones of purple in the late summer”.

Great Mountain Days has been written as a taster for the Fellranger series, to encourage people to stride out onto the fells and be more adventurous with their walking.

Mark Richards is a potentially splendid companion and this book is a very fine production. It aims to fulfil all four purposes.

I just wish he’d been given the opportunity to walk fewer walks at greater length.

Great Mountain Days in the Lake District is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com.