The Great Outdoors June issue

As well as a feature on my GR5 Through the Alps walk (as described here), in the June issue of The Great Outdoors I review eleven pairs of overtrousers in not the most exciting-looking piece - all the trousers are black - and the rather brighter Mammut Rime Flex insulated jacket. Also more colourful are Alex Roddie's review of backpacking foods he tested on his winter Cape Wrath Trail walk, and Dougie Cunningham's review of the Hoka One One Kaha and Toa boots, tested on a press trip to Iceland.

Other features are Sean McFarlane's account of a two-day trip on the Loch Lomond and Cowal Way, Vivienne Crow celebrating the summer solstice with a moonlit walk between Skiddaw and Blencathra - some stunning photos here, James Deboo spending twenty-four hours on Baugh Fell in the Pennines, and James Forrest climbing all of the 273 mountains on the island of Ireland.

The issue opens with a lovely picture by David Lintern entitled Spring above Lochan na h-Earba, though his caption describes it as an uneasy paradise due to over-grazing by deer preventing any regeneration in the forest. In the Almanac pages TGO Challenge coordinators Sue Oxley and Ali Ogden discuss wild camping 'once you experience the best of sleeping out in the wilds, no doubt you'll be back for more' - that's been true for me for over forty years! And this year I had many splendid wild camps on the Challenge, all pictured in my last post. Also in Almanac Chiara Bullen interviews Anna Wells who is setting out to climb all the Munros in 282 Munros in 62 days, am ambitious target. In book reviews the whole page is devoted to Roger Smith's review of Robert Macfarlane Underland - an amazing book I'm currently reading. I'll post about it when I finish. Roger Smith also writes about Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise Movement and the urgent need to tackle climate change. In his Mountain Portrait Jim Perrin looks at an old favourite of his, Moel Hebog in Snowdonia.