Steve Chilton's Blog: Goodreads Author's Blog

Details of my next book, co-authored with Prof Ifan Shepherd, which has been 15 years in gestation, and will be out in early October. It can be obtained from the publisher: The Charles Close Society for the Study of Ordnance Survey Maps.

ONE KINGDOM, 116 COUNTIES AND 17,000 SHEETS. The First Edition Ordnance Survey Six-Inch Map by Ifan D.H. Shepherd and Steve Chilton.

The six-inch map of Ireland was a hugely ambitious project for the Ordnance Survey to undertake in 1824, and as work...

Do you fancy a challenging race over Butser Hill (nr Petersfield)? The Butser Hill Challenge is a 5 mile fell run on the highest point in the South Downs National Park. The race is open to all with both Junior (school years 3-11) and Senior (age 16+) races enabling everyone over seven years old, up to adults to participate. Founded in 1978 as one of the first major – and toughest – mass runs, this event pre-dates the first London Marathon and was founded well before both the Great North and Grea...

I have just received a brilliant new book in the post, which I would like to recommend to you. It is ‘England’s Everest’ by Peter McDonald. Much to the credit to the author it is self-published, with all profits going to the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team.
About the book. It is:
o the only history of the Lake District 24-Hour Fell Record
o a full-colour hardback with 50+ images and detailed maps, with 204pp, and a hardcover
o written by an author who also wrote 42 Peaks, the Bob Graham Club’s history ...

I will have a stall at the Three Peaks Race on Sat 26th April, selling and signing ALL my running books. Do drop by and see me, say hello and (hopefully) pick up a couple of books. One of them is a detailed history of this iconic race (The Three Peaks Race), and another records the issues female runners had in getting accepted in the sport (Voices from the hills).

All six of my my running books will be available. Brief details of the other four are as follows (according to the publisher,...

[Longish read alert] I have not even looked at AI until now. But, reading about the Chinese-developed DeepSeek system, and how it was shaking up the US-dominated AI world, I decided to do a bit of gentle investigation. News sources report: ‘it sends shockwaves through US tech firms as stocks plunge‘.

I started on DeepSeek, and asked ‘what books has Steve Chilton written?’ This is info that should be available easily in the public domain, and that I know the answer for. I also noted that an...

It is time to review the blog after another year. I did fewer blog posts over the year, as the blog seems to be becoming less used by me (and others). Two stats: referrals came from Facebook at a 18:1 ratio over Twitter/X. For Twitter I have one account, whereas I can post notifications in a number of FB Groups. Visitors came from 70 different countries, with USA and Germany being distant second and third places behind the UK, and Ireland fourth.

MOST VISITED PAGES

The most visited page on...

The figures for Bob Graham Round (BGR) registrations, completions, male/female split, direction of travel, etc. for 2024, have been released on the BGR website. It always make interesting reading, and I have commented on it previously. [eg https://itsahill.wordpress.com/2020/01/08/bgr-completions-2019-update/]

I have updated my spreadsheet, and the graphs of several aspects of the data, which are illustrated below with a couple of comments on each.

This first graph shows the data just ...

There was a longish (3 page) ‘interview’ with me in the latest Fellrunner magazine which gives some of the back story to my writing endeavours, and tangentially my own running efforts. It was conducted by Graham Breeze, who asked some very good questions to prompt me to talk about the good and bad aspects of trying to be an author. He asked in particular what it is like to have my publisher go into liquidation, and also what I would like to be remembered for (which I found very hard to answer). ...

In an book interview recently I was asked: “will I be most remembered for writing It’s a hill, get over it“, which has probably sold the most copies of my six fell running books. My response was: “perhaps it should be Voices from the Hills – because I think that theme is probably a more important topic in the wider world”.

So, why did I say that and what is the book about?

The recent efforts of people like Jasmin Paris, Victoria Wilkinson, Nicky Spinks, Courtney Dauwalter (and many others...

A short blog to bring together different ways you can find out about my latest book – what it is in it and what people think of it.

Check out this YouTube video to hear about the book, why I wrote it and some snippets from it. It is a short interview I did with my publisher (Great Northern Books) as part of their series of Great Author Chats videos that highlight their authors’ work.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgQc0AoYUHs

If you want to know more about the book, and ab...