Short Runs in Beautiful Places

Short Runs in Beautiful Places is a guidebook of 100 trail runs on land maintained by the National Trust.

Known for their previous trail running guidebooks, Jen and Sim Benson have produced another well researched and beautifully presented guidebook. It is full of colour photographs and each route has details of how to get there (by car and public transport), easy to follow route descriptions, maps and some interesting facts and bits of history along with suggestions of other things to do or places to visit in the local area. book - short runs in beautiful places

The guidebook covers Great Britain with routes ranging from the coastal paths of Cornwall through Wales, Scotland and even includes a couple in Northern Ireland. There are routes for everyone from parents with buggies to those seeking more challenging technical trails. Woods, parks, meadows, beaches and more remote uplands are all included.

Short Runs in Beautiful Places is a great book for planning runs in new places and is ideal for families who want to plan a day out that maybe combines a run with other attractions.

RRP £12.99 Published by National Trust Books

North Wales Trail Running – book review

Following on from the successful Peak District Trail Running and Lake District Trail Running books there is now one for North Wales.

Written by experienced runner Steve Franklin, it follows the same format as the previous books detailing 20 trail and fell runs of various length and difficulty. Each route is described with easy to follow directions backed up by Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 map extracts. A brief overview of each route shows distance, ascent, estimated time it will take to run, the type of terrain you’ll encounter and how easy it is to navigate; whilst a graph shows the route profile so you know where the steep sections are!

North Wales Trail Running

The guidebook is set out with the shortest route at the beginning and the longest one at the end which makes it easy to thumb through and select a route according to your preferred distance, and its small size means that you can easily slip it into a bumbag or pack if you want to take it with you on the trails.

The colour photographs help give a flavour of what to expect: everything from easy forest trails to sea cliffs and more remote mountain terrain, and with routes ranging from 4km to 20km there is something for the beginner trail runner and the hardened fell runner alike.

North Wales Trail Running by Steve Franklin is published by Vertebrate Publishing RRP £12.95

Other books in the series: https://fellrunningguide.co.uk/lake-district-trail-running-book-review/

It’s A Hill, Get Over It

Fell running is an increasingly popular sport, but have you ever wondered how it all began?

Steve Chilton’s excellent book, It’s A Hill, Get Over It gives a detailed history of the sport; from the early shepherds’ meetings in the 1800’s through to the rise of the Brownlee brothers and the possibility of Kilian Journet tackling the Bob Graham Round! It describes the expansion of the fell race calendar including how some of today’s classic races came into being and also details the development of the Fell Runners Association.

With chapters devoted to Ladies fell running, Joss Naylor, and the Bob Graham Round along with interviews with some of the greats of the sport past and present, It’s A Hill, Get Over It is a must read book for anyone interested in the sport of fell running.

It’s A Hill, Get Over It is available from Amazon and all good bookshops including Outside, Hathersage.