Undiscovered Scotland

 

Guidebooks come in all shapes and sizes - well, sizes, anyway. "Walking the Fife Pilgrim Way" by Shana Lee Hirsch and Victoria Hunter is genuinely pocket-sized. This superb little book gives you everything you need to be able to walk the Fife Pilgrim Way from Culross on the Firth of Forth through the heart of the ancient Kingdom of Fife to St Andrews on Scotland's North Sea coast. Covering 103km (64 miles), this fully waymarked trail takes around 6 days to hike.

The book begins with a series of informative tables summarising the route and facilities along the way. A helpful and well written introduction follows, and then sections on trip planning and the background to the trail. The main part of the book is given over to chapters covering each of the stages of the route. Much of the joy of this book comes from its excellent production values. Each stage chapter is accompanied by a summary and a route description, public transport connections, excellent colour photographs, and full colour extracts of Ordnance Survey mapping. At the back are appendixes covering accommodation, churches along the route, useful contacts and further reading. Readers can also download the route in GPX format.

This is a book we'd highly recommend to - of course - anyone considering walking the route: but also to those visiting places along the way.