Thursday, May 28

Welsh 3000s - Tut tut Trail Mag


Following my recent piece on Thomas Firbank I'd heard on the grapevine that June's Trail Magazine would include an article on the Welsh 3000s, a challenge originally arising with Firbank and documented in his 1940 book “I Bought A Mountain”.

A pity then that Trail somehow overlooked mentioning the debt owed to Firbank and friends(although Esme gets a slight look in). Instead the focus was more on the opportunity for Trail to become Challenger #1 on Snowdonia Society's 14 Peaks

Err - not a particularly impressive achievement 'Team Trail' if nobody else knows it exists. Especially if that success arrives at the same time as knowledge about the prize.

Whatever.

Happily the Snowdonia Society site provides an accurate history to balance the picture.

Actually, now I come to think about it, much of June's magazine had me spitting. Not least that two of my recent wildcamp areas appeared in their walks section (yes I know they would have done them months before I got there, and at least one is a relatively common area, but it just felt soooooooooooo wrong)

Then there's the article on Wildcamping which left me with a feeling on it all being rather jolly, but also rather off-balance somehow. Especially compared to Dave Mycroft's Outdoors Magic piece on the same subject.

To quote Trail “giving out exact grid references are a no-no because sites tend to get overused, so here are a few grid squares for you to hunt for a spot in”.

Next to a 4 digit grid ref and the name Red Tarn.

Err - the point of wildcamping is camping in the wild. Not watching the party animals whooping it up on the other side of the tarn, having picked up the camp site courtesy of an earlier WHSmith stop on the M6.

Argh!

I give up.

Is it just me who finds Trail Mag rapidly turning into a comic as it tries to ride the current Craze for (cheap) camping breaks?

Especially now the Credit Cr*p has made it all so very trendy in the media at present.

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Comments:
I stopped reading it months ago for reasons I've already outlined on my blog.
 
I cancelled my subscription months ago as I consider it was already a comic then.
 
May be Bauer should sell the title to Marvel :)
 
Its definitely starting to lose the plot in its attempt to go "mass market". Worringly so at times
Pity - I used to rate it as #1 some years ago.
 
You are quite right about the mag, I have stopped buying it. I just used to get annoyed with myself for shelling out the money to read a mixture of recycled articles and statement of the bleeding obvious. "Sybil Fawlty - specialist subject the bleeding obvious"
 
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