Guidebook: North East Wales (Bikefax)
1st Dec 2005
As Vertebrate Graphics are doing to the Peak District, Bikefax are doing for North Wales: publishing decent quality, snazzy looking mountain biking guide books. The guide is much the same in style, layout and quality as its earlier companion to Snowdonia, instead covering 24 rides from Prestatyn to Vyrnwy. I would still like to see some indication of the route lengths and grades incorporated into the location map at the start of the book, and it is still missing the nitty gritty table of details I complained of in the first review but other than that it's another excellent bilingual guide.
Click here to read the review of the first guide, all of which applies to this one.
The guide is priced at £16.95
Once again the guide is also available on CD format, priced at £14.95. The previous one was priced at £9.50 so what's the difference? Initially it would appear not a lot. There are ten fewer wallpaper images and fewer route descriptions. However, a little digging into the source files reveals a few folders full of useful information for the technophiles out there. There are Excel files full of GPS coordinates and spot heights, tracklog and map source files, all of which will I'm sure, provide hours of fun for some. The interface for using and accessing these files could do with some attention though!
Reviewed by Matt Heason on behalf of planetFear