BOOK REVIEW - NICK LAMBERT GREATER MANCHESTER WALKS WITH CHILDREN 1999 Sigma Press There are twenty-two extremely
easy but totally pleasant walks in this book that you can take just as happily without children as with them. – They vary from park strolls like Heaton Park, and Lyme Park, to urban walks in Manchester city centre and strolls round rivers, lakes and reservoirs. The one thing you cannot guarantee of course is the weather. Bus, Metrolink, and train
route services can inevitably change, but the little maps of the mostly circular routes are very good. The book carries games and quizzes about each walk for helping children to look out for sheep, phone boxes, etc, (exercises which adults can obviously disregard.). The step by step guide through the walks are easy to follow, but in some areas, the book would be redundant, for example in Heaton Park, where virtually any direction you head will take you somewhere and there are decent sign posts anyway. This is a welcome book for planning a casual easy access day out for Mancunians. Cafes, toilets, whether or not pushchairs can cope with footpaths, etc, are given, and distances of the walks vary from one mile to five and a half. As you’d expect, none of the walks are too challenging, and all are easy to cut short if the
walkers get tired or hungry or need to get away urgently for any reason. The contrasting nature of the journeys make it easy to take a very different expedition each free weekend too – A useful book not just for families, but also for grown up walkers ho want a walk, rather than a Pennine Way route march endurance test. The publishers have similar guides for Cheshire and Derbyshire and other counties and these can be seen on their website - www.sigmapress.co.uk Arthur Chappell.