Most professional photographers, never mind keen and able amateurs, would give their back teeth to have their work published in a large and glossy coffee table edition.

"I'm so lucky," said new author, Mr Neville Turner. "Here I am, a country vet with this beautifully edited and designed book to my name."

He was being a little modest, for the photographs in a Dalesman publication, The Hill Farmer, most definitely ARE professional.

Mr Turner not only had a dog in the back seat of his vehicle when he visited various farms over a 30-year span as a vet, but a camera, too.

The 180 or so photographs in the book are a selection from a library of 30,000 colour shots taken over the years plus newly-commissioned ones.

Mr Turner has been a vet in the Yorkshire dales and North Pennines all his working life, and it has given him a privileged insight into the often harsh world of hill farmers who were not just his clients, but friends as well.

The hard life of the hill farmer - indeed any farmer - has been brought well to the forefront of our minds of late with the foot-and-mouth crises. Yet even today, few in the outside world know or understand much about the isolated lives farming families lead among the high fells.

The hill farmers' life has never been easy, and in Hill Farmer: A working year on the Fells, Mr Turner describes how a tough and independent breed has weathered crises and financial setbacks and created some of our best-loved landscapes.

Though retired, he has seen at first hand the heartbreak caused by foot-and-mouth. He answered the call for experienced vets to help fight the disease, and found himself thrust into the front line in Cumbria, the county worst affected by the outbreak.

"I spent four weeks there and it was heartbreaking, but necessary work. My life has been spent trying to save animals, not kill them," he said.

But ... back to the book.

While on his regular rounds on the fells of Teesdale, Swaledale, Wensleydale and Arkengarthdale, he took photographs of farmers at work and play against the backdrop of magnificent Pennine scenery, and these give an insider's view of the pleasures and tribulations of a working life in the hills.

The book includes a forward by Robert Hardy, who played James Herriot's partner, the irascible Siegfried Farnon, in the popular TV series, All Creatures Great and Small.

Was he hoping to become another Alf Wight, author of the books?

"Categorically not," he replied. "His books were stories well-written, and there are other good books in this vein. I am not a storyteller. The photographs say far more than I ever could."

Even so, he produced 28,000 words in 21 days to match the photographs in order to meet the deadlines set by the publishers once they had chosen the ones they wanted to use.

"I used to get up at 3am to write. For me this was the best time," he said.

The book came about due to a "penfriendship" with Mr Bill Mitchell, who was then editor of the Dalesman magazine. Some 20 years ago, he and Mr Turner started to correspond after the editor heard on the grapevine that the vet had an impressive photographic library on red grouse. He needed frames for a brochure he was producing - hence the contact.

Both men were cultural and wildlife enthusiasts, and contact was maintained throughout a variety of interests which they passed on to each other.So when, earlier in the year, the editor was consulted about the feasibility of producing an illustrated book on the subject of the life on a Dales hill farm, being familiar with Mr Turner's work, he suggested that the retired vet might be its author.

"I am very pleased with the finished product, thanks to a very professional team. I am very aware that similar subjects have been tackled before, but 26 years of knowing and admiring the Dales farmer have given me a special insight into how centuries of tradition are evolving to face the challenges of the 21st century. It is important that the culture survives," said Mr Turner.

He had only been into retirement a few weeks when he started work on the book.

"If I'd had to orchestrate my first month of retirement I couldn't have done better. To be let loose with my camera and 80 rolls of film was a bit like a chocoholic being let loose at Cadbury."

"Two and a half thousand frames later, I'd spent a morning with a mole-catcher, been heather burning, muck spreading, foddering sheep on the moor, stonewalling, and lime spreading. I'd documented calvings, caesarean sections, vaccinating stock, dosing sheep and clipping out cattle for sale. I'd even been on a nature walk with the pupils of a rural school."

The original plans took a year to come to fruition for the launch at Ripley Castle, near Harrogate.

Mr Turner was determined that coming out of retirement for the foot-and-mouth epidemic was not going to pull him back to his career.

"I'm not going to do a Frank Sinatra and keep returning to the fold," he said. "Anyway I haven't the time."

He has spent several "very pleasant" weeks lecturing aboard the QE2 and other on cruises, and is much in demand on this circuit.

He is a well-known lecturer, having given talks at Darlington arts centre and Houghall college of agriculture, and for several years he presented a Christmas lecture at the Royal County hotel in Durham. His photographic library expanded to such an extent that he was able to write and illustrate articles for photographic and countryside magazines including Durham Town and Country. He was also asked to feature in a programme in the Tyne Tees TV series, Dales Diary.

During his years as a country vet, he estimates that he travelled close to a million miles on rural roads, delivered about 7,000 calves, brought 10,000 lambs into the world, performed about 5,000 caesarean sections, opened and closed about 60,000 farm gates and undertook some 5,000 night duties.

"It was a joy. I've been lucky enough to work with dynamic, supportive colleagues, and together we've evolved from the James Herriot era to today's sophisticated high-tech service."

He can even look back on some more hairy moments with a wry smile: like reaching the top of an 8ft high wall in one bound with a ton and a half of Chianina bull inches behind him; or being hauled up a rope through a trap door into a hayloft to escape an attack by two demented cows.

But, throughout all this, the joy he experienced during his working life, the love of the dales and the farmers in them, come shining through in the photographs in this, his first, but perhaps not his last, book.

In the foreword, Hardy writes: "Neville Turner lays before us the beauty, the challenges and harsh demands that come with the changing seasons and indeed with the changing climate, for hill farmers and their partner vets; his pictures truly catch those seasons under the fickle northern skies."

Even those who are not country lovers will surely not help but marvel at the scenes that have been captured on film and through them travel with him over his beloved fells.

The Hill Farmer, published by Dalesman £17.99, with £1 from each sale going to the RABI foot-and-mouth crisis fund