Filled with tales about walks, local history and famous local personalities, illustrated with nearly 200 wonderful drawings and hand-drawn maps, it is a book that will appeal to all who love the Lake District, whether they be hardened walkers or visitors of a more leisurely disposition.

The book has twelve chapters, 216 pages, 185 drawings and eleven hand-drawn maps.

This excellent new guide is divided the Lakes into ten areas, and has its own chapter. Despite having explored the Lakes for many years, the author went back there over about five years to revisit each location, refresh memory and gather new material.

This isn't a classic guidebook with point by point descriptions of walks. The author has described many walks, but also written about other things that caught his interest and that will also interest readers.  

​And each chapter is fully illustrated with drawings of views and maps, and curiosities.

Customer reviews -

A wonderfully evocative and informative guide to the Lake District that succeeds in conveying the unique physical, scenic and historical delights of the region. The author clearly has a great affection for the Lake District. He has a wonderful way with words and is a talented draughtsman to boot. If the Lake District was human this book would be filed under 'biography' rather than 'anatomy'. It won't serve as a foolproof, step-by-step guide to ascent and descent of Lakeland's fells - but, then again, it's not intended to.


I realise I have obviously been walking in the Lake District for the last 25 years with my eyes shut. There are so many places I have been to in the Lakes that I love to visit, but I've never spotted what has been under my nose all the time. In this book, Swanson has taken me back to favourite haunts and opened them up to me in a new way. It makes me want to visit new places in the Lakes and revisit ones I thought I knew well but clearly don't. The author has a refined, gentle wit that drew me in and through the book with ease, and almost every page is filled with stunning sketches that are surely worth publication in their own right. I can't wait to get back there with this book in hand and find the places he described so engagingly. Move over Wainwright!