Outdoor Odysseys

Adding ideas from The Hike Life books

It happens in the last quarter of every year: a whole slew of appealing books with appealing presentation and photography appears in bookshops in the run-up to Christmas. Last year, this included one called The Hike Life by Rozanna Purcell, and a copy found its way into my possession. As award-winning as it is, that needs to be consulted for hiking ideas around Ireland, now that I need them.

The story has not ended there, for another one appeared this year with a similar title: The Hike Life: 50 More to Explore. Now that I have somewhere to base myself in the country that easier to reach without a car and perhaps easier to maintain too, my brother got the idea of sending a copy of this year’s book among other things.

Apparently, there is an outdoor enthusiast community underneath this effort too, yet it is the combination of appealing photography and route descriptions that closes the sale for this package. If there is any criticism about the format, it might be the lack of maps and any advice regarding the use of public transport. The latter is tricky in a book anyway, since the details change all the while, so it works best with a magazine setting. The former still would make route appraisals a lot easier.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of useful advice at the start of the book that gets repeated from last year’s volume; these books clearly do not depend on each other. Maybe that is just as well, since the target audience may be those who normally do not frequent Ireland’s wilder places. Nevertheless, the second book does refer to walks in the first where appropriate.

What needs to happen next is to make a list of the hikes and get out maps or a mapping app (more likely web based for this, though I am a heavy user of mobile apps too) and get pencilling in some ideas. Given the attractive package of the source material at a time when there is no Irish walking magazine, it is a pleasure to have something like this to hand. The first book is not to hand right now because it does not live where I am writing these words, yet that needs to be plundered too.