If you’re a seasoned hill walker you’ll understand. Indeed, you might already have climbed several – or even all – the Wainwrights. But to a generation hooked on apps and online walking guides, learning about the man behind the myth is something of a revelation.

Alfred Wainwright mapped 214 of the highest hills in the Lake District, meticulously and with supreme accuracy drawing all the possible routes to the summit of each one. And then compiled all of those maps with illustrations and detailed route descriptions in seven hand-written guidebooks.

Yes, there wasn’t a line of type used anywhere in the production of those guidebooks which have gone on to be best sellers, and are still loved 35 years after Wainwright’s death. They are not just superb companions when walking on the fells, visual assistants for those whose map-reading skills might be a little rusty. They are funny, witty, informative souvenirs of wonderful holidays or day trips to the Lakes. Yet he was the most unlikely of cult heroes.

Born in Blackburn, Lancashire, AW as he liked to be called first visited the Lake District in 1930 when he was 23 and fell in love with the area. He had taken the train to Windermere, and from the station he went for a walk up Orrest Head, still a favourite for first time visitors, for youngsters with little legs, for even younger children in pushchairs, and for older walkers whose days on the high fells are a distant memory. When you go up there, you see the view that Wainwright saw, an astonishing panorama of Lakeland hills with the full length of the lake of Windermere in the foreground.

It was a life-changing moment, he wrote, where “quite suddenly we emerged from the shadow of the trees and were on a bare headland, and as though a curtain had dramatically been torn aside, we beheld a truly magnificent view.” Those short hours cast a spell that changed his world.

When he could, he moved to Kendal and devoted his life to mapping the area, writing those seven guidebooks to the Lakeland fells, categorising each book into sections, beginning with the Eastern Fells. He was a quiet genius whose words and pictures opened up the Lakeland fells to generations.

So you will hear people talk about tackling the Wainwrights, or ticking off the Wainwrights. A woman was interviewed recently on a Lake District podcast who had walked all 214 no less than 11 times. A young Cumbrian boy, 11-year-old Leo Mason, is halfway to his tenth circuit. And there have been record attempts to run round them all in one go; the current record of five days, 12 hours and 14 minutes is held by American ultra-rtunner John Kelly.

But you don’t need to go to such extremes. Take a Wainwright guide, one at a time. Start with some of the lower summits – lovely Loughrigg in the southern Lakes, delightful Latrigg in the north near Keswick. Take your time, appreciate the views, look out for the features that the author describes and, when you get home, get the book out again and relive the whole adventure.