From the ridiculous...

The photo stretches across a double page spread of the large format volume - and from one margin to the other a procession of tiny figures is silhouetted on the ridge.

We counted 91 people on that stretch of ridge, like shoppers on a monster escalator, each enjoying a glorious view of someone else's backside.

The photograph is a montage, so it's possible that some of the walkers might have been pictured twice; even so, it's a startling tally.

Striding Edge is a classic ridge route, deserving its popular reputation. But Gordon Stainforth eloquently summed up what the image signalled: "Once walking or climbing days are judged solely by their Munro-bagging or E-point productivity, they are reduced almost to the status of a job, to a repetitive routine that has been stripped of much of its meaning and adventure.

"More and more it is just a matter of another path to be followed, another well-worn script to be repeated. More and more the mountain mimics, in a sort of grotesque ritual, the treadmill of everyday life."

Presumably the majority of walkers in the photograph would have preferred not to have to queue as jams formed at awkward sections - yet they headed for one of the best-known routes in Britain on a Bank Holiday!

The over-rated and over-used Pennine Way has been, with some justice, dubbed the walkers' motorway. There are now many other routes on which walking, with nose-to-tail traffic and stop-go progress, match the joy and carefree abandon of towing a caravan on the M25 London circular motorway.