Britain is a nation of walkers. Our landmass may be modest in size but is latticed with a generous 140,000 miles of public footpaths, bridleways and byways, and exploring them is one of our favourite pastimes.
It wasn’t always so. Before the late 18th century most people walked only because they had to, or if they were on pilgrimage. Walking was the preserve of the horseless poor. With the rise of the Romantic movement came the idea of walking for pleasure, prompting such poets as Wordsworth to some of their finest words after traipsing the countryside on foot.
So began the great British tradition of walking, and writing about it. Some authors have accomplished arduous hikes in far-flung lands; others have written just as engagingly about journeys much closer to home. Take Robert Louis Stevenson. Famously, he tramped with a donkey across the mountains of the Cévennes, though it is his gentler ramble across the Chiltern Hills that is the focus of my book, The Country of Larks.
Non-fiction accounts such as Stevenson’s make up the majority of books about walking in Britain, although fictional narratives have their place too – as do walks in less bucolic landscapes. Today, it seems no topography is too pedestrian to induce British authors to lace up their boots and take to the byways (and sometimes the highways) of our country. Here are my 10 favourites.
1. Journey Through Britain by John Hillaby
Sometime before 1968, when the book was first published, explorer John Hillaby set off with a backpack to walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats, preparing for his 1,100-mile hike across Britain as rigorously as if he were traversing the Himalayas. Predating today’s emphasis on self-discovery in travel writing, this classic may feel somewhat dated to modern readers. Its appeal lies in the warm and witty evocation of the British countryside and its people, as observed half a century ago.
2. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
One June morning in 1934 the young Lee set forth from the Cotswold village of Slad, where he’d lived for most of his life, to walk to Spain. But before reaching Mediterranean shores, Lee walked through southern England, writing about his wanderings and encounters in characteristically elegiac prose. This was the era when tramps still roved the country lanes, cars were a rarity and Lee was still young and idealistic – before his initiation into the turmoil of the Spanish civil war.
3. A Coast to Coast Walk by Alfred Wainwright
Ambulatory writers usually follow the old ways – whether trade routes like the Silk Road or pilgrimage trails such as the Camino de Santiago. Alfred Wainwright preferred to plough his own furrow by creating an entirely new approach: a 182-mile walk linking St Bees Head in Cumbria with Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire. Complementing Wainwright’s handwritten instructions and detailed drawings are touches of wit, homespun philosophy and lyricism, giving even the most sedentary reader an appreciation of England’s dramatic northern landscapes.
4. The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
Shepherd spent a lifetime exploring the Cairngorms on foot. This impressive mountain range attracts climbers from around the world, yet this is not a book about climbing. Dismissing macho Munro Bagging as “sterile”, Shepherd instead ventures out in all seasons and all weathers (mostly alone and sometimes barefoot) walking not on to the mountains, but “into” them. It is the meditative rhythm of walking that unveils for her the essence of the Cairngorms – mountains that she comes to know as intimately as old friends.
5. The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald
When WG Sebald took a short walk in the Suffolk countryside he found himself among a burgeoning troupe of literary psychogeographers roaming Britain during the latter half of the 20th century. Modelled on Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur, the physical journey is less important than the meandering intellectual expedition the narrator takes – in Sebald’s case, one that embraces history, memoir literary criticism and biography. A hybrid of fiction and non-fiction, The Rings of Saturn has influenced a host of 21st-century imitators.
6. London Orbital by Iain Sinclair
True to conventional travel writing form, at the heart of this book is a Homeric-style quest: a journey the protagonist is compelled to take, often within a specific timeframe. Less conventionally, the quest undertaken in this book is a Sebaldian stroll around the 117 miles of the M25. Sinclair splendidly unearths an idiosyncratic and multilayered edgeland of industrial parks, shopping centres, housing estates and golf courses encircling the capital at the turn of the millennium.
7. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Joyce’s novel sees her eponymous antihero set off on a trek across England to deliver a letter to a terminally ill former colleague. This Bunyanesque allegory about a retired brewery manager reflecting on his past while putting one inadequately shod foot in front of another takes on a tragicomic edge as attempts to catch up with him fail. At the heart of the narrative are Harold’s words to his old friend: “I will keep walking, and you must keep living.”
8. Nightwalk by Chris Yates
Uncommonly, the walk described in this spellbinding narrative takes place over just a few short hours, and by moonlight. Setting out from his Dorset home one midsummer evening, Yates encounters the terrain and resident wildlife in its less familiar, nocturnal guise. Despite both the brevity of the walk and the book, as the sun rises you feel you have accompanied the author on a journey into an enchanted world, sharing the sounds, sights and smells that are only revealed after dusk.
9. The January Man by Christopher Somerville
Inspired by Christy Moore’s folk song of the same name, Somerville embarks on a series of walks over a calendar year in search of his father. Although Somerville the elder is no longer alive, the author unveils the story of their relationship via 12 walks across Great Britain, from the flood plains of the Severn (where Christopher grew up) to the towering sea-cliffs of Foula. The book tenderly blends memoir with descriptions of nature and the passing of the seasons.
10. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Few books about walking are written by women, and even fewer by authors forced to take to the road by the twin misfortunes of sudden homelessness and serious illness. Winn and her husband did just that, packing their few remaining belongings into rucksacks and hiking the 630-mile South West Coast Path. We walk with Ray and Moth every step of the way, sharing the hunger, exhaustion, blazing heat and freezing rain in an account that is both lyrical and inspirational.
• The Country of Larks: A Chiltern Journey by Gail Simmons is published by Bradt, priced £11.99. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK P&P on orders over £15.
