book reviews continued
mainland, using where possible the
network of long distance trails.
The choice of his route, as might
be expected, was heavily infl uenced
by geology. Not for him, for
example, was the dreary moorland
underlain by the “dreary” Caithness
Sandstone, which would have taken
him to the more traditional far
northern fi nishing point of John
O’Groats.
Instead, he plumped for the
much more interesting geology
of Ardgour, Knoydart, Torridon
and Sutherland in the North West
Highlands to fi nish at the ancient
cliff s of twisted gneiss and layered
sandstones of Cape Wrath, which
he describes as providing “a very
dramatic and abrupt end” to his
long walk.
And he decided to start his
100-day backpacking trek not from
the traditional but over-populous
Land’s End, but from the wild and
beautiful black slates and haunted
tin mines of Cape Cornwall.
There was, of course, also the
irresistible attraction of linking
Britain’s only two true capes –
which incidentally gave him a
catchy title for his book!
Illustrated by the author’s own
photography, at fi rst glance this
seems like a “what-I-did-on-my-
holidays” diary. But beneath that it
tells the story of one man’s journey
to reconnect with his hills of home.
The Mountain Hut Book
Kev Reynolds
Cicerone, £14.95 (pb)
W
ho better than veteran
mountain trekker
Kev Reynolds to
expand on the joys of
staying in a mountain hut? This
latest celebration from Cicerone
is a worthy companion to Phoebe
Smith’s Book of the Bothy, a
compendium of British bothies
published in 2015.
But in this new book, the
author doesn’t just stick to the
better-known mountain huts of
the Alps, although they are pretty
comprehensively covered by a
directory of Alpine huts, profi les of
10 of his favourites, and outlines of
10 hut-to-hut walking tours.
Reynolds also mentions bothies,
huts and lodges way beyond the
Alps, extending to the Himalaya,
the Pyrenees, the Atlas Mountains
of Morocco and even to the
Appalachians and Canadian Rockies.
So what is the attraction
of staying in a hut, where the
accommodation can range, as the
a