I found this an interesting read, I haven’t been to most of these places, so it was nice to read something very new to me.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

A lovely gentle, slow paced meander around the peaks, lakes and valleys of the Lake District - an impressive 379 miles of them.
The author is a professional travel writer and this is his story of walking around the Lake District.
It tells of the people he meets along the way .
Loved that he had a plan and stick to it - all his accommodation was pre-booked and he arrived everywhere he planned on foot.
Also loved that he ranked the pub sandwiches.
Fall in love again with the awesome, amazing Lake District.
Thanks @tomchesshyre, @summersdalebooks & @netgalley for the eARC

What a delightful book from an author with a clear appreciation of nature. However, by the end, I did find myself thinking that the content was repetitive

A good travelogue is the one that makes me open a map and check if I could visit those places and walk on those path.
This is a good one and I learned a lot in for organising
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine a future travel.

Letting me return to the company of a travel writer much under-represented on my reading list, this is a book about the Lake District – thankfully – and not necessarily the man. Yes, I find a lot of books about hikes where the author imposes her/him-self too much on proceedings, telling us how wonderfully they romped here, how drizzly the weather was there, and what they saw with their flawless bird-spotting eyes. You don't know the fluminous-striped ostra-crow, you live in Croydon.

This takes us suitably from place to place, on an ad-hoc 370-mile loop of the lakes. We get what it was like to try and hike this hill, and some of the distances, but this is about the experience when you let a place reveal something of its heart – something arguably so few people do in the Lakes. Our author chats to all the people he can – just the first couple of days alone he pops by so many eateries you fear for him ever managing to get to his digs for the night – and looks at what is making them tick.

Here it is a lack of staff in the service industries, and Ukraine. And while the latter is about to become the latest subject it's not that interesting to read years-old reportage on, it will never beat covid for that. You do rankle at Ukraine being called "south-east Europe", mind, when it's not exactly bordering Greece. But closer to home, this is wonderful stuff. This is a Lake District as lived, and not as seen on a day hike – there are trips to extinct quarries with their exhibitions of the industrial plant of the region, there are encounters with people decommissioning Sellafield. The place is idyll upon idyll but all the schools are closing down, and every shut shop justifies a lost bus route.

The flip side to that is that these pages are so winsome – the best beer garden in the county, the bluest fake nails on a barmaid, and so on – that (besides a bizarre liking for Bob Marley) this place could be inundated by Chesshyre fans. OK, Wordsworth and everyone and their dog since have written one of the 50,000 books about the Lakes and you can still find yourself alone, but I will not be alone in wanting to follow the list of hostelries mentioned as one 370-mile long pub crawl. (Good news, then, that the three star restaurant he can't lunch at in April has availability for every slot this July fortnight as I write, bar none.) Whether this engages with the Insta crowd and the inappropriately-dressed selfie takers remains to be seen. But while the author is not pretending to have surpassed recognisable logic with his mileage, and not claiming to have recognised the three-throated chiff-warbler by sound alone, this really is my kind of Lakes travel book.

But, seeing as here he totes Coke Zero and elsewhere online says he remembered the wine, just how did he lubricate his night in the bothy? We need answers!

This book is just a list of hotels, bed and breakfasts, pubs, restaurants, name dropping their owners and staff. He has done some ‘online research’ on places he passes through with his eyes closed. Living in the south lakes I know many of the routes he travel and he missed so much. The true beauty of a lake district in not found online nor in the expensive restaurants and hotels. Walk away from the honey pots and find the beauty of nature for yourself. This would have bee so much better if he had made the journey with someone. Then there could have been some interesting dialogue and exchange of lived experience. As it is it wouldn’t inspire me to follow in his footsteps.

Lost in the Lakes by Tom Chesshyre

From Penrith to Ullswater, via Keswick, Cockermouth, Coniston, Grasmere and Windermere, plus many places in between, Tom Chesshyre puts on his walking boots and sets forth along the trails, drawn onwards by the dramatic scenery that attracts more than 19 million visitors each year.
As someone who calls the Lake District home , I always enjoy a new book that gives me an insight from other people's perspective of this lovely place.
I like the author have ( probably ) hiked 379 miles ( although in my case over many years ) and it was great to read about the places I have also enjoyed. A great and amusing book.





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