Product Description

`A marvellously evocative writer ... he even describes the cold with warmth.' Kathleen Jamie, Boardman Tasker Prize Judge

`Engaging and heart-warming ... a wonderful journey.' TGO

`A man with mountains coursing through his blood.' High

`Mike writes compellingly about the thinking behind such an apparently insane journey.' Trail

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70717 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-10
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

The Herald
`In lucid expansive prose, he describes his remarkable `hell of a journey' through the Highlands, battling blizzards and rainstorms.'

Scotland on Sunday
`Written with an enthusiastic attention to detail... The style is refreshingly honest and extraordinarily open…'

The Scotsman
'Written with wry humour and illustrated with stunning photographs, his book is an inspiring adventure.'

Customer Reviews

Brrrr: rather him than me!
This is a great book to read tucked up in your bed on a winter's night - just so that you can be so glad that you're not sharing in the author's tortuous experience. He writes well. You can hear the howling winds and sense the abject misery of camping alone in the Highlands in miserable wet, cold weather. I do feel that doing such a challenging walk in mid-winter was a tad silly. I mean: it would be so much more enjoyable doing it in the summer. The heightened challenge seems unnecessary and pointless - like trying to hop around the coast of Britain rather than walk but it makes for a great read.

My only criticism is that the book has possibly too much description of the landscapes. The names of hills and settlements mean nothing either. Some more background information about local history and the people he met would further enliven the narrative - but I guess that walking in such a remote region there wasn't much of an opportunity for this.

Serious Munro Bagging
Oddly, the snow on the front cover of my edition appears black and rather surreal. The book is well written by someone with a broad knowledge of Scottish mountaineering. However, it is essentially an account of bagging 300 or so 1000m Munros in one gruelling trip and in parts it becomes a little monotonous. It is a fine effort but doesn't add greatly to the existing repertoire of mountaineering non-fiction.

A right riveting read
As a reader of many hillwalking guide books I was interested to see how Mike would approach this. Would it turn out to be a book for would be walkers setting out on their own big adventure?
I was very impressed. From the first pages I was in turn enthralled and delighted by the author's account of his journey: he has a way of relating his story that completely draws the reader into the adventure, such that I could hardly put it down. A book to appeal to walkers and readers everywhere.