Some Hill Walking Magazines
Here are a collection of hillwalking magazines that I have been known to peruse and I either have or had subscriptions to all but the last two in the list. There may be more on the market but these are the ones that have taken my interest. There are only so many magazines that anyone can read anyway…
This is the magazine that I prefer to all the rest and it went through a major redesign in 2011 too. The Scottish influence thankfully remains with Cameron McNeish and Roger Smith staying on as contributors. The whole feel is much brighter these days and the issues weigh more too so it becomes a little harder fro them to be the exponents of lightweight backpacking that they once were. That means that I cannot bring as many with me on a trip that involves air travel with Ireland being a regular destination for me. Still, the content remains engaging and ideas get spawned too. For me, that’s the most important aspect of any magazine and the changes do not detract from that.
Unlike TGO, routes featured in this magazine are more likely to take you by country villages as you wander through the countryside so it’s meant for a different type of walker. Still, it’s not all lowland walks with the hill route component having been beefed up in recent times too. It shares its website with Trail and Trial Running magazines and the design was one that I felt to be an acquired taste for quite a while. Thankfully, a redesign has seen the return of convention and its not unwelcome either.
The name says it all: the main focus is clearly on Ireland. If I ever get around to walking in my home country, this is from where my ideas could come.For a long time, the website was little more than an advert for the magazine even if online subscription purchasing facilities recently got added courtesy of PayPal. However, a new website created using WordPress is offering interesting possibilities. There isn’t so much on there yet but there’s a good start made already and recent issues can be perused online. Naturally, subscriptions are available for purchase too.
After a first glimpse in Booth’s supermarket in Keswick, I was hooked on this for about a year or so afterwards. In fact, I even became a subscriber though that lapsed when my interest waned. These days, only a return from a Cumbrian outing that needs some reading material on the way home will see me buying a copy though frequenting a Booth’s shop in Knutsford has seen me acquire copies in recent months. It has a different owner and editor from when I used to read it regularly and publishing is bi-monthly too; I believe that it once was monthly but that’s a hazy memory at this stage.
There was a time when I was a regular reader of Trail but I grew beyond it when its various feature articles stopped appealing to me. That is not to say that I don’t pick up the occasional copy but it’s one of their extensive gear comparisons that will attract my interest rather than anything they feature on enjoying the outdoors. Even so, I recently found the route descriptions collected at the back of a recent issue were to my liking but it’s still not a regular read of mine. It shares its website with Country Walking so the same comments apply.
A recession might not sound like the best time to be launching an outdoors magazine but that is what the publishers of Trek & Mountain have done. They seem to be going after the most adventurous part of the market too with trips to High Sierra in the U.S.A. and Antarctica being featured in the current issue at the time of writing. These may be beyond my own horizons but I did acquire a winter mountain walking special from the same people at the end of 2010. It seemed useful given all the snow that we had everywhere back then.
