Regular visitors to Linda’s Book Bag will have noticed a dearth of blog tours this year. Life is just too complicated to commit to them at the moment. However, I couldn’t resist taking part in this one for Barbara Henderson’s latest middle grade book I Don’t Do Mountains as I have loved every one of her books that I’ve read and always want to shout about them from the rooftops. My thanks to Barbara for inviting me to participate. I only wish I’d had time to read and review as well as share a lovely guest post from Barbara.
You’ll find my other reviews of Barbara’s books as well as other features here.
Published by Scottish Mountaineering Press on 17th March 2025 I Don’t Do Mountains is available for purchase in all the usual places as well as directly from the publisher here.
I Don’t Do Mountains
Adventures are good things for people in books.
But I am not a person in a book. I am Kenzie. I like to READ about adventures, not actually have them.
A hillwalking expedition? With a group of strangers AND Sorley Mackay, the most annoying boy in the universe?
Bookworm Kenzie can’t believe her bad luck when her teacher announces plans for a three-day hillwalking expedition into the Cairngorms. She tries everything to get out of the trip, but soon the group heads to the hills with mountain leader Bairdy and set up camp for the night.
Bairdy’s stories of ancient magic fill Kenzie’s mind, but in the cold light of morning, they discover that the mountain leader has vanished, his tent left untouched. They are alone.
Take a walk – how Barbara Henderson learned to appreciate the outdoors – despite her best efforts!
A Guest Post by Barbara Henderson
Every Sunday afternoon, it was the same unwelcome rallying cry: Get ready, Barbara. We are going for a walk.’
To which my inevitable answer was: ‘What? Again? Noooo.’
I’m a country girl who grew up on the edge of a village, the brooding darkness of Germany’s endless forested hills no more than a stone’s throw away. I spent all day outdoors as it was – playing in the garden, exploring the woods and burns all around our house, walking to my cousin’s house which was even more remote. I wasn’t fair! Why did my evil parents have to impose a walk. Walks were pointless, in my humble opinion. You went from A to B to A again, without the freedom of playing or taking adventure detours along the way. And what were you to do while placing one foot in front of the other? Talk? Look around? It was the very idea of purgatory for eleven-year-old me!
And yet. My parents pointed out different trees which I learned to identify by their leaves. We spotted deer and hares, collected bird feathers and investigated wild boar tracks on the forest ground. My parents were keen foragers for mushrooms and berries too – yawn! This made those walks even longer. Come on, I’d whinge. I want to go home!
Home to read my book, most likely. I was a voracious reader as a child, and my idea of adventures was to disappear, quite safely and without any physical effort, between the pages of a great story. There! That was better.
I opted out of those Sunday afternoon walks as soon as I was a proper teen. However, when I moved to Scotland to study, something very strange happened – I began to miss all the things I had previously resented in my upbringing. I began to set the table for the formal coffee and cake afternoons which I had detested. I began to listen to classical and choir music which I had drowned out with Springsteen back home. And, much against my better judgement, I began to develop an interest in birds, and gardens and… going for walks! Who had I become?
In my defence, if there was ever a country made for walking in, it was Scotland! It began innocently enough, with short wanders in and around the beautiful city of Edinburgh. Before long, we were taking weekends away to the Borders, Aberfeldy and Glencoe. What was happening to me? When my husband’s job took our family to the Highlands, I had to admit I was a lost cause – I had turned into my parents. Like my mum and dad before me, I am mother to three (now grown-up) youngsters who protested against the obligatory weekend walks almost as much as I had done. But they can also identify most birds and have experienced first hand wading through Scottish muck on the way to a foggy hilltop, or being assaulted by a million midges on a coastal campsite. My latest story, I Don’t Do Mountains, is about that experience – being a young person who has no choice but to engage with the great outdoors – but who cannot quite resist the lure of it either.
Most people passing me in the street would not class me as a typical outdoorsy type – and I am not muscly, lithe or weatherbeaten. I am not even tough. But how could I not fall in love with birdsong and breeze, and the wild places on my doorstep.
A typical Sunday afternoon in our house now will be quiet. No rallying cry, no protest. Just the creaking of the chairs as we smilingly get our walking boots on and head out for a walk.
It goes without saying.
****
Thank you so much Barbara, and yes, I think we all become our parents in some ways, so I’m off to dig out my walking boots – though sadly Fenland Lincolnshire doesn’t offer many mountains…
About Barbara Henderson
Barbara Henderson is the award-winning author of eleven books, including the Young Quills Award-winning novels The Chessmen Thief and The Siege of Caerlaverock, as well as Rivet Boy, winner of the Books for Topics Curriculum Support Award. Her historical and eco-fiction for children is widely studied in schools. Barbara is based in the Scottish Highlands where she still teaches Drama, but she loves to travel and spread the story-love in classrooms across the country. When she gets the chance, she likes to head outside, often to the nearby hills.
For further information, follow visit Barbara’s website, find her on Facebook or follow Barbara on Instagram and Bluesky.
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