If you think Kinder Trespass is a plastic egg, read this

Adam Bradbury

24 April 2012

Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone on BBC Radio 6 is my favourite music programme, so I was intrigued when my colleague Rita handed me Never Mind the Quantocks (David & Charles, 2012, £10.99).

It seems the DJ's thirst for the offbeat isn't restricted to vinyl. Since the late 1980s he's hiked in just about every crag, cranny and backwater of the British Isles.

But a mash-up of 60 or so pop-song-length columns originally written for Country Walking magazine? Easy excuse for a book, I thought. And why the acres of space for each chapter heading? A design tweak could have saved 60 pages, and a few quid - and make it lighter in the backpack.

Enough grumbling. I soon got into the rhythm of the snappy, aphoristic chapters - each offers up at least one nugget of observational gold.

And I can't help warming to a man whose favourite thing is Lake District walks, the stuff of my best family holiday of the past decade. Plus he's a Wigan Athletic fan - and as long as Wigan stay in the premiership there's always going to be one team Tottenham stand a decent chance of beating.

Maconie's enthusiasm is infectious and his writing is often really good. He neatly captures "the ta-da factor" of mountains. He eulogises the "slightly bumbling and daft" hedgehog which "embodies a pre Jeremy Kyle Britain before idiocy and shouting and mawkish displays of sentiment were the norm." And he gives due credit to the right to roam Britain's countryside - a right which Friends of the Earth and others campaigned to secure.

This is no iron-man approach to survival. More Rufus Wainwright than Alfred, as he says. Take it easy, do what you want, bring the radio, a nice bottle of red, scented wet wipes - but enjoy the outdoors for their own sake, seems to be his basic philosophy. And it's often done with a rather lovely turn of phrase.

"They say there's a pine marten in Greystoke Forest and I really hope there is. I'll never see it it, which is just as well considering how badly my species have treated it, but I like to think it's there slinking through the quiet nights along the trails back to its tree root den."

Today (24 April) is the 80th anniversary of the Kinder trespass - a mass action to uphold the right to roam. Whether or not you knew that, or are just looking for a fresh take on the burgeoning body of new English nature writing, Never Mind the Quantocks is a little gem. You can get it from The Book Depository.

Adam Bradbury, Publishing & New Media team