Portobello Book Blog

Something a bit different from me today, a short review of a walking book. I have several of these Pocket Mountain books for various places we have been walking in Scotland, although they have guides for many places throughout the UK.

If you like to go for the occasional walk, I really recommend these books. In all the books I have, there are 40 walks listed with a mixture of town, country and coast walks. They are suitable for various abilities and the walks range from short circular walks lasting about an hour to longer, linear walks which could take the best part of a day. There are energetic walks up hills and more gentle walks alongside rivers or seashores.

What is great about the books is that they are very clearly laid out with straight-forward directions of how to get to the walk, a easy to follow map, photographs and often interesting snippets of local information too. Although we do sometimes get lost, that says more about us than the books!

At the weekend we did one of the walks from the Pentland Hills, Midlothian and East Lothian book. We began at Nine Mile Burn and climbed to West Kip then back, through a glen. We saw deer, frogs and some hares and heard skylarks singing as they soared and enjoyed some amazing views over the Forth, down to North Berwick and across to the Peebles-shire hills. To give you an idea of the maps, here is a detail from one of the other walks in the book, one which takes in Aberlady Bay and Gullane.

And here are a few photographs from our walk – I must admit that I left my fitter daughters to climb the steepest part of walk, the hill called West Kip, while I had a rest and admired the scenery at the bottom till they rejoined me.

You can order any of the books directly from the publishers’ website. They cost £6.99 currently and postage and packing is free to UK addresses. https://pocketmountains.com/

Details from the back of the book

Think of East Lothian and Midlothian and a low-lying, predominantly rural landscape may well spring to mind, yet the Pentland Hills, just south of Edinburgh, rise to nearly 600m in height and provide some of the finest hillwalking in Scotland with wonderful views from the summits. To the east, the Lammermuir Hills may not have quite the same appeal as their near neighbours but they still offer superb hillwalking options, while North Berwick Law, Traprain Law and the Garleton Hills make up for what they lack in height with a succession of incredible panoramas. Away from the high ground there a lovely pockets of woodland, wildlife-rich country parks, fascinating historic sites and forty miles of coastline between Musselburgh and Dunbar with some of the best dune-backed beaches in the country to enjoy.