River Map

River Map re-traces the exploratory journey undertaken by Jim Perrin - Telegraph columnist and author of award-winning books on mountaineering - from the mouth to the source of the well-known river Dee in north-east Wales. Far more than a physical record of the environment and habitat of the area, it is a highly personal and deeply probing account of the urge itself to discover in its many dimensions a region haunted by a long history of conquest and resistance. Jim Perrin also muses upon man's fascination with 'uncovering' - or at least witnessing - the mysteries of land and water, not least of which is the source itself of the river Dee. Complementing Jim Perrin's fluidly written story of the Dee are over 40 colour photographs taken by his artistic collaborator John Beatty. Like the text itself, the photographs are far more than merely descriptive representations of the journey to the river's source. They offer what could be called a truly aesthetic testimony to the beauty of the journey and also to man's ongoing fascination with such journeys. Born and brought up in post-war Manchester, Jim Perrin found a classic escape from city life in rockclimbing, and has since become a pioneer in the field. His biography of Menlove Edwards won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountaineering Literature and his essays on rockclimbing have been acclaimed as among the best writing on the subject. His books include Menlove, Mirror in the Cliffs, Visions of Snowdonia, On and Off the Rocks and Yes, to Dance. Spirits of Place, published by Gomer Press, appeared in 1997. Jim Perrin has lived in Wales for over thirty years, working as a guide, shepherd and writer.

About the Author :
Jim Perrin is a writer, broadcaster and rock climber. As a writer he has made regular contributions to a number of newspapers and climbing magazines. As a climber he has developed many new routes, and made solo and free ascents of great difficulty. Among his books are River Map (Gomer Press, 2001) and Snowdon: The Story of a Welsh Mountain (Gomer, 2012). He has appeared at many festivals and is the recipient of a number of awards e.g. Boardman Tasker Prize, Wales Tourist Board Wales in Print Award 2002, VisitAmerica Travel Writer of the Year, 2000.

Review :
Jim Perrin has been described as ‘the most outstanding prose-writer of present-day Wales’ and this volume will give those who agree with that assessment even more ammunition. As a mountaineer he has had the landscape quite literally at his fingertips, and records and evokes it most intimately well. As a writer he has mapped the interior world with all the skill of a forensic expert taking a partial thumbprint and conjecturing the identity of the whole. Walking in all weathers, he is a man in his elements. In River Map he is following the Dee, and, pardoning the pun, it proves to be a ready source of inspiration. The book was written at a time of emotional trial for Perrin, but his river walk takes him via wells of inner strength, and is a more muscular tract for that. And he had a photographer, John Beatty with him for part of the journey and the images bless the text – unfussy and felicitous shots of widgeon ducks rising from estuary muds; serene, summer stretches of river and strands of bog cotton. The photographs bear witness, but they do not offer moral comment. But Perrin’s words do, castigating the rich who invest in forestry, caring not a jot for the ravaged landscape or the deadened waters which can result, or cursing the mole-catchers. He is also a well-read informer, telling us how Llyn Tegid, or Bala Lake, was once called Pimblemere or appositely quoting the Gaelic poet Cathal O’Searcaigh, Raymond Carver and Richard Jefferies. In writing about nature so well, Perrin is not only following in the tradition of writers such as William Condry, but is keeping the small candle of that tradition alive at a time when it threatens to gutter in the smoke blowing out from the cities. Nature poetry is fast becoming an endangered species. So too is writing about nature with respect and intuition, with a regard for the lessons written on the wind, or to be guessed at in a raven’s flight. On the face of it this is slight book, but there is a fund of insight between its pages. There is description and meditation and mysteries to solve. We wish the writer well on his own personal journey, even as he pays us the courtesy of inviting us to join him on a long walk, and proves himself to be an inestimably fine companion. Oh! and he stops for beer, too!