• South West Mountain Biking – Quantocks, Exmoor, Dartmoor
• Nick Cotton
• £14.95
• Vertebrate Graphics
• 00800 4321 3350

South West Mountain Biking is the second MTB guidebook from Vertebrate Graphics, following on from the well-received Dark Peak Mountain Biking. Written by veteran route guide compiler Nick Cotton, SWMB has 26 routes split across Dartmoor, Exmoor and the Quantock Hills, plus a bonus route in the Mendips.

There’s a section in the book for each area, with a brief introduction as to what sort of riding you can expect, plus a handy overview map that shows you whereabouts each route is located relative to main roads and towns – useful if your requirement is for, say, a route near to Tavistock.

SWMB has the same general advice about rights of way, equipment and so on at the front before diving in to the routes. They’re all graded – mostly “hard”, with a selection of “mediums” and a couple of “extremes”. The descriptions themselves are along the same lines as Dark Peak Mountain Biking, with map illustrations and landmark/junction based route descriptions. Our comments on the earlier book apply again here – we like the clarity of the maps, but miss the contours and grid of OS extracts, and the descriptions are sufficiently detailed but we’d appreciate grid references and compass directions.

There’s a good variety of route lengths and styles in here, although we can’t help thinking that the Quantocks routes perhaps try a little too hard to be different – exploring quieter areas is always welcome, but we feel that room could have been found for some of the classic Quantock trails that don’t make it into this book.

There’re plenty of fine photos, although (and, yes, we’re really nitpicking now) some of them come across as a bit staged – having warned the reader about travelling unprepared into exposed moorland areas, we’re treated to shots of Lycra-clad riders without so much as a waterbottle and spare tube about their persons. Do as they say, not as they do…

As with Dark Peak, PDFs of the maps and descriptions are available on a CD so you can just print the essentials off rather than carrying the whole book around and probably wrecking it in the process.

Positives: Clear design, plenty of content, covers a lot of ground

Negatives: Same route description caveats as for Dark Peak; slightly odd Quantocks selection

South West Mountain Biking maintains the high standards set by its Dark Peak predecessor. It’s good to see a guidebook covering a less-frequented part of the country, too…

Performance: 4/5
Value: 4/5
Overall: 4/5