I'm back

There's been a long, long silence from me in the blogging world. I can only blame Christmas and the pressure of work. After an intense couple of months I'm finally beginning to get my head out of the clouds though and it's a very fine view.

The Ride2stride Festival programme is finished and at the printers. We put it on the website at www.ride2stride.org.uk and we print 15,000 paper copies to leave in stations and tourist centres and walking shops and anywhere else that will have them.

It's our only real cost and we're grateful to Friends of Settle Carlisle Line and Northern Rail for paying for them. The timescales are ridiculous though - the train timetable for May when the festival is held comes out in December. All the walks start from a station on the Settle-Carlisle line at the time a train arrives. I have to firm up all the start times with the walk leaders just as everyone is disappearing into Christmas. There's 30 walks this year. You get the idea.

We've also got a new book out. It's just over 4 years ago in September 2008 that we published our first Skyware book. It was A Dales High Way Route Guide. Yesterday we took delivery of book number 5 - Lady Anne's Way. It's a beautiful book, a guide to a 100 mile long distance walk across the north of England which also tells the story of Lady Anne Clifford. It's written by Sheila Gordon and illustrated by her artist husband Frank and I love it.