Walking-books.com is a small independent publisher of quality UK walking guides and an online retailer of a huge range of maps, guides and outdoor books from the best publishers the book trade has to offer.
The decision to publish our first book, The Lakeland Pack, 18 years ago in 1993 came about through our love of the countryside and walking in the hills and fells and we also wanted to provide walkers with something better and, crucially, more user-friendly that wasn’t at the time available.
After months of trialling different ideas we decided on our concept of putting the walks on handy, durable, weather-proof walking cards with a unique combination of concise, easy-to-follow routes local information and professional mapping. To complete our pack we added a useful user guide and decided to provide a custom made map-case for the walking card which meant the walker had everything they needed for their walk on an A5 weather-proof card that could be carried conveniently around the neck or in a jacket pocket.
The public certainly took to our unique format in providing walks as the Lakeland Pack was a huge success. This gave us the confidence to turn our attention to, firstly, the Yorkshire Dales with The Dales Pack arriving in 1994 and then the Peaks with the Peak District Pack being published in 1996.
Since those early days our range now extends to nine titles and covers the Dales, Peaks, Lakes, North York Moors, Snowdonia and the Cotswolds.
The Ultimate Walking Companion was born!
Our attention was turned to the next generation of walkers and how best to encourage children away from the TV or Play Stations and X Boxes and out into the great outdoors to enjoy the countryside.
After quickly realising there were already dozens of books on the market that claimed to be ‘Walks for Children’ but were in fact simply short walks, poorly presented and with nothing to attract a child to use it, we struck on the ‘Making Tracks – Fun Walks for Kids’ concept.
The series is designed for the children to take the lead, reading the easy-to-follow routes and following the child-friendly maps whilst looking for things of interest along the way. No more "Are we there yet?" or "I'm bored!"
Now children can have fun filled days with Making Tracks covering The Yorkshire Dales, Peak District, Lake District and North York Moors.
We had launched a website to sell our own products but felt we needed to do much more to help those interested in the outdoors find the maps, guides and books they needed. We have now completely re-launched the walking-books.com website and have a huge and growing range of titles from the best UK producers of outdoor maps, guides and books.
As with the walking guides we publish we have tried to make it both different and as user friendly as possible because we didn't want to simply yet another provider. We want to be personal, professional, friendly and the best. We want to interact with our customers and welcome contact via email, telephone or Twitter where we love to pass on information regarding new titles, special offers or simply general outdoor news and views.
We want shopping with walking-books.com to be an easy, enjoyable experience with 100% customer satisfaction. If there's a book, map or guide not on our site, tell us about it and we will do our best to source it for you. If something does goes wrong, tell us about it and we will put it right. If you have ideas to make the site even better, tell us and we will look at making changes. If you enjoy what you see and are pleased with the service, tell us and then tell all your friends!
I'm Mike and I hope you have found our story of interest. We look forward to helping you make the most of your trip to the hills and fells by providing the perfect map, guide or book to complete your trip.
WALKING-BOOKS.COM 67 Wynbury Road,
Gateshead, Tyne & Wear NE9 6TT
0843 289 6377
