COUNTRYSIDE and transport campaigner Colin Speakman has published his fourth book of poetry.

People in a Landscape is a collection of poems demonstrating the author's love of the countryside and to be read 'again and again'.

Mr Speakman, who lives in Wharfedale, in addition to his campaigning, is also a successful writer and poet, being the author or co-author of more than 50 books about walking and the outdoors.

They include The Dales Ways - the route of which he was largely responsible for establishing in the late 1960s.

A keen walker, he is a Vice President of both the Yorkshire Dales Society (YDS) and the West Riding Area of the Ramblers Association, and is the Chairman of the Dales Way Association.

In addition to his other writing, Colin is also a poet with a growing regional reputation. In the preface to his fourth collection of poems People in a Landscape he explains that poetry gives him a chance ”to celebrate our region’s spectacular natural beauty and cultural richness in a different way”.

Poet and critic Mary Sheepshank, in a preface to the collection, says: “Here are poems to be read again and again, often finding something fresh we missed the first time, for he has that enviable ability to set our own imagination working”.

People in a Landscape, at £4.50, can be purchased direct from the publisher, Fighting Cock Press, 45 Middlethorpe Drive, York, Y024 1NA, email pmk@pkirk304.force9.co.uk