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PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD

My friend Kev Reynolds has spent fifty years exploring mountain landscapes and thirty years writing about his experiences. In A Walk in the Clouds he shares some of the high points of a full and happy life as a wanderer and writer.

I first met Kev at a book fair in London many years ago, when my wife Lesley and I were in the process of taking on Cicerone Press. Kev had come to inspect his new publisher. He brought with him the manuscript of a guide to trekking in the Manaslu region of the Himalaya to see whether we would publish it. Naturally we did and we have carried on doing the same slightly crazy thing ever since.

Over the years, we have shared many days and weeks in the hills, whether in the Alps or the Himalaya, Cumbria or Kent. There have been whole days poring over maps and debating how best to bring new mountain areas to life for walkers, trekkers and mountaineers.

Kev is the leading authority on many mountain ranges, including the Pyrenees, many regions of the Alps and the Nepal Himalaya. As the author of numerous guides he has inspired many thousands of trekkers to explore some of the most beautiful parts of the planet. As a lecturer in the dark winter months, he regularly evokes the mood and majesty of the mountains to spellbound audiences.

In this book Kev tells how he set off, aged 21, to explore the Atlas Mountains of Morocco – and never looked back. He abandoned his desk-bound local government job to pursue a life in the mountains, living and working in Britain, Austria and Switzerland before finding his true metier as a writer.

Kev’s first book, Walks and Climbs in the Pyrenees, came out in 1978. Now in its fifth edition, it is still regarded as the definitive guide to the range, even by many French experts. Since then Kev has written 37 books and guides with Cicerone, and 14 with other publishers, and written widely for other books and magazines.

Even today, Kev is always looking for new places to explore as recent trips to Ladakh and the newly-opened Mugu region of western Nepal attest. To those who know him, Kev is one of the world’s natural and great gentlemen. He is always positive, ready to help, and a true friend and great family man. To the rest of the trekking world, he is our leading guide. Few tributes can match the question often heard around an alpine hut in the early evening from trekkers pondering the next day’s challenge or looking back, tired but happy, on excitements just experienced: ‘So...what does Kev say?’

Jonathan Williams