The good the bad and the ugly- A book review of Walking in the Algarve

We use a lot of trekking guides, and also a lot by Cicerone. Generally they are very good, but they do vary. This is by far the worse we have ever used. If it wasn’t in the Algarve where you are never more than a few kilometres from civilisation it would be downright dangerous. So here is our book review;

The book is by Julie Statham and called Walking in the Algarve- 40 Coastal and Mountain walks. It is published by Cicerone in 2006, 2nd Edition (ISBN 1 8528473 7).

 

The good

The book is small, like all Cicerone guides and would fit in your pocket, but it does not have the really useful plastic rainproof cover.

The book is light, well it does only show 40 walks.

Although the cover price is £12 (it is certainly not worth this), you can purchase it on amazon for £6.35 new, and for £5.93 second hand (still probably not worth it). There are a lot of second hand copies available, see below to find out why.

 

The bad

The title is disingenuous;

There are no mountain walks.

There are only 34 walks, but six do have variations, the author seems to get bored by the end of the book, walks 26-33 have only cursory descriptions, no real route description at all, probably because they follow PR routes which are very well marked.

Many of these walks spend a lot of time on roads, paved tracks, and unpaved 4×4 tracks, very little is spent on footpaths. Some of the landscape is beautiful, but the routes are tedious.

All of these walks should be considered easy, with no difficulty.

 

The Ugly

The description of the routes is appalling.

The language used is vague and confusing.

The author interchanges track, road and footpath without description. Often a track might be paved, and a road may be gravel! You would expect paved road, concrete road, cobbled road, stony track, rocky footpath etc.

Sometimes they are described in minute detail and then no detail at all. Important, relevant waymarks are consistently missed.

We use walk 9 as an example.

‘Stay on the road as it bends right and then left before a ruin on the left, after which it bends again to the left. No it turns right! The road rises slightly before turning left, with great views to the east. Ignore an overgrown track off to the right. No mention of the abrupt right turn, or the smallholding on the corner- so why mention the ruin? Less than 100m further on turn right on a good track that drops down into woods.’

A convention in most guides is to use time as you walk a route. This is important for safety. Distance is often irrelevant, 1 km along a paved road may take 15 minutes, but in a mountainous terrain it may take over an hour, and when scrambling or climbing many hours.

Most people want to complete walks safely in daylight, so time is the critical benchmark. Now people do walk at different speeds, which is why a guide needs to be consistent. We use a lot of Cicerone guides and are usually 20% quicker than the times given. The author never tells you how long it will take you to get to the various points in the walk, just the overall length, but often uses distance, ‘walk along the road for one kilometre’. Unless you have a pedometer, this is difficult to judge.

We have spent many hours walking back and forth along the routes inadequately described by the author, trying to fathom them out. It is like letterboxing without the clues.

The author has a habit of using animate objects to describe a walk, for example ‘a house with dogs barking’- they may be out, ‘a house with a wheelie bin outside’- it might not be there anymore, ‘an unkempt field’- that has just been recently ploughed. A suggestion- use inanimate objects, ones that are unlikely to change as way-markers; road names are often really good, but you might also say ‘opposite the large water circular water tank’, ‘just before the high voltage pylons’ etc.

Many walks are circular, but very rarely does the author use compass directions, another unobserved convention, ‘travel in the direction of NE for 5 minutes, before turning SE’ would have been really useful.

Often the description is not in the correct order. ‘Go to the left on the path and follow it directly away from the road, slightly downhill. It is partly cobbled’. No it is not. ‘Descend between old walls. As you enter a small woodland turn right on a path that leads down to the Old Convento’. Now it is cobbled.

Walk 7

‘Just after passing the last houses there is a new development.’ Where is there not a new development in the Algarve, and what happens to your description when a new one is built along from it, as has happened. Name the development.

Towards the end the route crosses a stream ‘Boca do Rio’, which is 3-4m in width and 80cm deep. This should not be attempted by children. The alternative route is an extra 3km in length, and will take an addition 45 minutes. This needs to be made clear.

Walk 20

The author suggests you walk across the top of a Neolithic stone bank. We decided not to damage this piece of archaeology and used the proper route below the bank.

 

The so called maps are particularly bad. The book says on the rear cover ‘Illustrated with clear route maps’. These only just pass as diagrams.

The so called maps rarely show important junctions.

They fail to show when you are on road, unpaved track or footpath.

Crossing of a road may be indicated, or not.

Features described in the text, may be shown or not.

Only some diagrams give an indication of terrain or contour, on these there is no understanding if the route is ascending or descending. Where height is indicated it is often wrong.

Diagram 9 has no indication of contour, which would be useful as it is in a hilly location. Diagram 11 indicates Monchique between 100 and 200m, really! Heights on Map 14 incorrect. Map 19, no scale no north point, road incorrectly labelled as N270..

There is no indication of land use; forest, field or scrub.

They are a real mess, DO NOT REALLY ON THEM.

These are not maps.

 

It is apparent that while the author may have walked these sorry and tedious routes herself, she certainly did not have someone check the validity of her text, or maps by following them.

Let us hope that the author does not decide to write another guide in a more challenging terrain where she could put someone’s life in peril.

 

Qualifications for the review;

We have been walking, trekking, scrambling and climbing for over 20 years, in five continents and all terrains. We use a lot of guides, maps and soles.

GDR