Walking books and Maps

Chilton, Lance  7 more and more challenging walks in the Plakias area. 32 page booklet with accompanying map written by an expert in the field. 

Chilton, Lance  Six Walks in the Georgioupolis Area.  20 page booklet with accompanying map written by an expert in the field.

NEW

Click on the logo to go to my review of the book below, on west-crete.com.

Collman, Jeff. Walks with Crete's Wild Flowers New book (2003) with fabulously described walks and sumptuous pictures and descriptions of Crete's wild flowers. As this is a private publication, the price is higher than it otherwise might have been, but to me it is worth every penny. I shall be reviewing this book for west-crete.com, during January 2004.

Gallos, Caris and Bouras, Anne Circular Walks and Gorges in East Crete. An excellent new walking book to Eastern Crete by Caris Gallos and Anne Bouras. Click on the picture to picture for contents list and a very brief description. SJ

Godfrey and Karslake: Landscapes of Eastern Crete  If you need any inspiration to get into the great outdoors, these books will give you ideas on walks, picnics and car tours. Normally one for grabbing a map at A and setting-off for B, I found that these books gave me added dimensions which made my last holiday much more enjoyable. The Western Crete book is below.Part of the excellent Sunflower series.S.J.  

Godfrey and Karslake: Landscapes of Western Crete  If you need any inspiration to get into the great outdoors, these books will give you ideas on walks, picnics and car tours. Normally one for grabbing a map at A and setting-off for B, I found that these books gave me added dimensions which made my last holiday much more enjoyable. Part of the excellent Sunflower series. The Eastern Crete book is above S.J.  

Herner, Girt and Murbock, Jakob.   Rother's Walking Guide to Western Crete.

Rother Walking Guide to Western Crete. A very good walking book this, with plenty of diversity in the walks. More general than Lorraine Wilson's book (see below), but consequently not as good on the "White Mountains". Details to follow.

Wilson, Loraine   Crete: the White Mountains
Paperback.  First. Travel Guide. Small 8vo. A nice little guide book to the white mountains of Western Crete. Great walking details though the maps within are not thorough enough for the walks involved. Colour photos included.   You can read my review - for explorecrete.com - of this book by clicking the banner, below:

Maps

                 Right! I have been saying for a number of years that the Road maps are my favourites, though to  Crete, the previous scale of  1-250,000 didn't represent this. Well it does now.  1-100,000 is not massive in Western European terms and is no bigger than the Harms maps, but they are cheaper, clearer and in my view more accurate. The Harms maps also have a nasty habit of falling apart. Having just spent seven weeks on Crete, I could have done with these whilst I was there, but typically they came out a month after I returned. Both maps are double sided with town plans (Aghios Nikolaos and Herakleion for the East and Chania and Rethymnon for the West. No Siteia, and Knossos, has been discarded, which is all a bit disappointing. The Eastern map takes you as far as a line running slightly West of Perema in the North and Tympaki in the South, whilst the Western map goes a little bit further East than Rethymnon to the North and Spili to the South.  Get in quick though.

Freytag and Berndt Pub.) Hiking Map of Crete (scale 1-50,000)  A superbly detailed map to areas suitable for hiking in Crete. The areas include: The Samarian National Park; Orno to Thriptis; Asterousia on the South coast; Idi; and Lasithi. The Accompanying booklet describing the walks comes is in Greek, English, German and Italian, with a few photos, but no index. The lack of index is understandable as you are in a finite area here and will probably know where you are setting off from and where you are going to but I still believe that one should have been included. Once again an excellent map. SJ   

Harms (Pub.) Map of Western Crete (Scale 1-100,000)  This (and its Eastern Crete companion map) are by far the best scale obtainable and is a fantastic map. This takes you from the West coast to Heraklion in the North and Plakias in the south. Because of the scale the map is spread over both sides and the detail is very good, certainly when compared to anything else -only the "Road Edition" map comes close. My only quibble and it's a major one, is that there is no index, so you may need another map to show you where you are going - seeing as it comes in a plastic case I can see no reason why an index has been excluded. Other than that and the fact that they tend to fall apart, they are excellent. SJ

Harms (Pub.) Map of Eastern  Crete (Scale 1-100,000) This (and its Western Crete companion map) are by far the best scale obtainable and is a fantastic map. This takes you from the East coast to slightly West of Heraklion (Sisses)through Mires in Central Crete down to slightly West of Papadogiannis in the South. Because of the scale the map is spread over both sides and the detail is very good, certainly when compared to anything else -only the "Road Edition" map comes close. My only quibble and it's a major one, is that there is no index, so you may need another map to show you where you are going - seeing as it comes in a plastic case I can see no reason why an index has been excluded.  Other than that and the fact that they tend to fall apart, they are excellent. SJ

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