Walking the Hills of Upper Swaledale

Keven Shevels Kev has been involved with outdoor sports since his school days doing the Duke of Edinburgh award, spending his time either walking or running and latterly mountain biking through the countryside of the Northern Dales and beyond. He first went up Swaledale as a young lad with his father, the pair of them fishing on the Swale above Grinton. In his teens he did all his training for and his actual Duke of Edinburgh expedition on the hills above Muker and Gunnerside and then during his twenties and thirties when he was heavily into fell running, one of his must-do events each year was the Swaledale Marathon, starting from Reeth and covering the moors between there and Gunnerside. As you can guess he's always liked this part of the world and over the years both the history and the landscape of the dale have held a fascination for him. His great delight is spending hours reading a map and coming up with new routes which he can then subsequently set forth to explore. This in-built curiosity to go and view things, more often than not, leads him to objects and places that don't appear in other guide books and he enjoys sharing these experiences with those that read his ramblings. Now in his fifties, Kev has been unable to continue his running due to injury problems but that hasn't curtailed his pleasure from being in the great outdoors and he now spends as much of his time as he can walking the hills and dales of this region. Over the last couple of years he has been the co-author of one of the most innovative series of coaching books for fell and trail runners published and he now brings his easy to read, informative style of writing to guide books for those who walk in the countryside of the Northern Dales.