Trail Guides – serie

The first one-volume walking guide in English to the most popular long-distance route in Europe walked by British tourists.With the advent of low-cost airlines it is as cheap for the British tourist to go to mainland Europe as to the extremities of the UK – which is why in recent years continental long-distance routes have become increasingly popular with the British walker. Most popular by far is El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the ancient Christian pilgrimage route that has been travelled for over a thousand years to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, where, legend has it, the bones of St James are buried. This guide follows the most popular route, starting at St Jean-Pied-de-Port in south-west France and heading all the way westwards across northern Spain for 800km to finish at Cape Finisterre on the Atlantic coast.Now, extending its series of Trail Guides beyond the UK for the first time, Aurum publishes the first compact one-volume guide to the path, fully illustrated with photography, it offers comprehensive route directions, sectional route maps, gradient profiles, a history of the route and details of sights to see and separate chapter guides to the main cities along the way like Pamplona, and a list of accommodation en route.

The classic high-level walk from Irish Sea to North SeaOriginally devised by the legendary Alfred Wainwright, the Coast-to-Coast Walk has steadily become one of Britain’ s most popular long-distance walks, and it is not hard to see why. Planned to seek out the most spectacular high ground across the country, it takes you from the sea in the west to the sea in the east via three of England’ s loveliest National Parks: the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors. Its 192 miles, from the quiet Cumbrian village of St Bees to Robin Hood’ s Bay, are a substantial test of endurance that will take even a fit walker a fortnight to accomplish, but also a wonderfully varying walk, from sea cliffs to craggy mountains and lakes, then across rolling dales and finally heather moorland. For everyone who reaches Wainwright’ s Bar at journey’ s end on the North Yorkshire coast it will have been the walk of a lifetime.

A must-have guide for any walker looking for a challenge and wanting to escape the city, this explores the London LOOP London Outer Orbital Path (The London LOOP ) which follows a green corridor right around the capital.This spectacular route offers a circular walk among secret countryside that will make you forget you're within a few miles of Heathrow Airport, the A13, or the suburban sprawl of Croydon, Watford or Dagenham. Here is rolling downland near Coulsdon, the forest of Enfield Chase, the lonely Thames marshes at Rainham, the classical parkland of Bushy Park and a canalside stroll at Uxbridge. London could not seem further away.Split into 15 sections that each represent a day's walk of reasonable length, this walker's companion gives detailed descriptions of each walk, including numerous points of interest and key sites numbered in the text and on the maps for easy identification.With background information on everything from local history, architecture, archaeology, industry, land-use and wildlife plus full information on public transport access to the start and finish of each walk, this book shows you how to escape the Big Smoke for the day – without going too far!

The Northumberland coastline stretches from the outskirts of Newcastle up to the Scottish border at Berwick-upon-Tweed – a popular holiday destination for its wild  and sweeping landscape of endless beaches of pale sand,  succession of spectacular castles like Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh, congenial resorts like Alnmouth, and unique offshore attractions like Holy Island and the Farne Islands. Now, Roland Tarr’ s new Trail Guide maps out the walker’ s route along the entire coast, starting from the centre of Newcastle and including an extension beyond Berwick to the seabird crags of St Abb’ s Head.Along the way the guide covers the remarkable industrial heritage of this coastline – the coalmining town of Ashington that gave birth to both the Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters and the Charlton brothers – and its fabulous wildlife, with seals and puffins off the shore. From a handsome Tyneside city to a distinguished border town straddling the Tweed, this is a superbly bracing walking country for the ever-increasing number of tourists who discover Northumberland every year.