Sparky was created by two old friends, Jon Cox and Peter Burton, who decided to tackle the Cotswold Way to reconnect, and subsequently fell in love with walking long-distance trails. 

We were – perhaps naively – astonished by the richness of the landscapes we walked through: their beauty and complexity, the rich layers of natural and human history that surrounds us all. But we were unable to find a guidebook that was both reliable on the practicalities of trail walking AND, most significantly, able to bring alive the stories all around us as we walked.

With backgrounds in publishing and writing, it seemed a logical next step to try to create the guides we wanted ourselves – ones that go beyond the practical to inspire, inform and entertain – to truly capture the WOW-ness of walking.
Central to this for us is the placing of pithy information boxes on the maps themselves, removing the need to flick backwards and forth. Everything you need as you walk is there on the page.

Our goal is to make Sparky guides stylish, distinctive and visually attractive, highly practical but also conveying our own sense of wonder in the wealth of interest that lies around us in the landscape.

In short, we aim to create inspiring guides for curious walkers.