Vivienne Crow is a freelance writer and photographer with a passion for the outdoors. A journalist since 1990, she abandoned the constraints of a desk job on regional newspapers in 2001 to go travelling in Asia and New Zealand. On her return, she decided to focus on the activities she loves the most - hill-walking, writing, travelling and photography. Her first experience of long-distance walking was on the Dorset and south Devon sections of the South West Coast Path as a teenager celebrating the end of her A-Levels. Since then, she has enjoyed dozens of backpacking trips, including Wainwright's Coast to Coast, the Southern Upland Way and most of the rest of the South West Coast Path. Based in Cumbria since 1996, Vivienne has written several books on the county, mostly walking guides. Her outdoor features regularly appear in magazines such as TGO, Lakeland Walker, Cumbria and The Lakes, and she has popular walking columns in several newspapers in the north of England. In addition, she works for conservation and tourism bodies such as Scottish Natural Heritage, the North Pennines AONB and the Eden Rivers Trust, researching and writing leaflets and interpretation panels. In 2010, she won the 'Best Guidebook' and 'Best Outdoor Feature' categories in the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild's Awards for Excellence. Vivienne's book 'Walking in Cumbria's Eden Valley' was shortlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year Award in 2012.