Dales Way: The Complete Guide Paperback – Illustrated, 1 Mar. 2011

Practical and packable, with clear directions and route maps (at 1:25 000). But it also uses its space to the full, and manages to provide a fine portrait of the Dales, its landscape, people, and wildlife, in addition to the necessary background information on the major highlights along the way. There are many photographs, well chosen and inspiring (up to the standard of the one on the cover). A fascinating book even for someone who is not likely ever to go there.P.S. It's quite light at 250 grams, but if you're keen to save weight you could just carry a map with you while out walking, and annotate it from the book before you go. But in practice this is tricky, since you need to buy TWO Ordnance Survey maps,  Yorkshire Dales: Southern and Western Areas (OS Explorer Map)  and  Yorkshire Dales: Northern and Central Areas (OS Explorer Map) , to cover the whole route at the same 1:25 000 as the book, and the two maps together weigh as much as the book! The only practical alternative to the book itself in the field (apart from cutting up these O.S. maps into strips) is to use the Harvey  Dales Way: XT40 (Route Map) , with its 1:40 000 strip maps (annotated with essential walking-notes), one sheet for the whole route weighing only 60 grams. But, even if you don't end up taking it with you on the walk, the book still makes a superb planning guide and souvenir companion.

Dales Way: The Complete Guide Having used this guide on the Dales Way through all sorts of weather I can thoroughly recommend it. The strip maps are excellent and include annotated comments which were most helpful particularly when the way was not well marked. The associated text proved most useful as preparatory information for each days walk. The guide also provides some interesting alternative high level scenic routes for good weather days. The open guide just fits into an A4 map case with each strip map covering up to 3 miles of the walk. Excellent value

The book contains some very detailed descriptions that might help one to negotiate certain sections of the route, but these are interspersed with paragraphs of factual information - a page on the history of the A6, for instance - that seriously interfere with the practicality of the guide as an on-the-spot routefinder. My copy fell apart on the first day of use, and the wind carried some of the pages away. So it's one for the study, not for the open road.

Worth it for the customised annotated maps alone: will provide all you need to navigate the Dales Way: we never had to even open our OS maps! Just be careful - it's not really waterproof, despite the feel of the pages.

Have just walked the Dales Way in the SNOW! The guide was invaluable and was used every inch of the way! An excellent buy with so much interesting information included in the book.

We walked the Dales Way in September and found this an excellent guidebook to the route and interesting places along the way. It's small enough to fit in a map pocket, but it did get a bit bedraggled in the wettest Yorkshire autumn for 30 years! Waterproof version please!

This book was a gem in helping us to both plan our Dales Way holiday and on a day to day basis whilst doing the walk. The information it provided en route was invaluable.