Buy Sunflower: this is why...

Over 40 years of experience in each guide

Sunflower has been producing guides for walking in Europe since 1983. A guide to walking in Madeira was the first we published; in 1989 it won the Thomas Cook award for best travel guide.

The formula we used to develop that guide has since been honed to produce a tried-and-tested range of around 60 guidebooks.

We can confidently give you all the information and insights that you’ll need to get the most out of your walking trip.

On top of that, these guidebooks come in a compact format that fits into your pocket.

Free updates for your guide

In addition to the wealth of knowledge and experience contained in our guidebooks, we also offer a free update service.

This really extends the life of our guides; you, the user, have all the information known to us immediately.

Updates are provided both by ourselves and by our readers. These updates are uploaded onto dedicated update pages for each book on our website.

It’s always worth checking these pages before you start your trip in case something has changed since your book was published. You could also check the updates while on your trip for some last-minute reassurance.

See the big picture with our fold-out touring maps

Our books feature a fold-out touring map which provides an excellent topographical overview of the area you’re visiting.

Some walking ‘purists’ might say that we could fit more walks into a book if we did away with the drives. But we like driving!

Not only do the driving tours take in the very best sights in the area, but they are also designed to pass by the starting points of our walks.

So you have double the enjoyment. Your walk is an exciting day out, but the journey to it will be as well.

We dispute the fact that we don’t have enough walks. Each ‘Landscapes’ book has enough walks to last a month or more. Whereas some other publishers separate out a really short walk, we either include such a walk in our ‘picnicking’ section or as a short walk suggested with the main route.

There are, for instance, 100 different routes in our Madeira guide, 90 in Croatia, 80 in Tenerife.

Download free GPS tracks

In addition to the fold-out touring map and walking maps drawn specially for walkers, you can also download free GPS tracks from our website.

They cover all the walking routes in our books. These aren’t just waypoints, but are full tracklogs, covering every inch of each walk. Waypoints indicating important or interesting features on the ground are also included.

Of course, our books can be used without access to these GPS tracks. But they are a useful addition which is becoming increasingly popular with our readers as they can be viewed on any smartphone.

Choose between a printed book or PDF ebook

All of our titles are available for purchase as a printed book or a PDF ebook. Both formats contain exactly the same information, so it’s really your choice which you find the most convenient.

We do not publish Kindle editions or any other type of ebooks. This is because our detailed maps would not enlarge without going out of focus. On the other hand, pdfs can be enlarged with great clarity.

Another advantage of PDF ebooks is that they can be accessed immediately after purchase with a download link. If you’re already away, you can buy one of our guidebooks and be out on the local trails in minutes!

Or, if disaster strikes and you lose your printed guidebook while you’re away, you can purchase the PDF ebook and be up and running again in just a few moments.

A final advantage to the pdf files is the ability to just print out the pages you want to take, and perhaps print them larger.

To keep our books to a reasonable size, we have drawn the maps to 1:50,000. You could print them out at double the size, with no loss of clarity, and annotate them.

A guide and a souvenir

Your publishers’ first walks (on Madeira; see about Sunflower) were inspired by a little 24-page booklet of photos with sketch maps (no walking notes at all), published by the tourist office.

In it was a photo of a tiny white waterhouse on the full-to-brimming Levada do Norte, surrounded by box hedges and red flag lilies. ‘I want to go there!’ said Pat.

That started us off. Our books aim to have many good photos — to inspire those walkers who, like Pat, are very image-orientated. It was not the reason we decided in 2019 to go to a wider format. That was because maps were getting ‘lost’ in the gutter, but certainly it helps to have a wider format for photos.

No other walking guides for Europe offer so much:

• Walks with topographical maps at a scale 1:50,000 or larger.
• Car tours, with a touring map, designed to take you to the walks.
• Update service – easy to access and unique, we believe, among walking book publishers.
• Index – so you can quickly find if the walk you are looking for is included.

With all these advantages for the same price as most other guides, why buy anything else?