CURES ON FOOT

Three new books offer inspiration for those who would heal themselves by walking, writes Paul Ash

WALK IT OFF by Erns Grundling, Queillerie, R280

If any account of walking the Camino will convince that a long journey on foot can mend a broken heart, it is this one. Grundling set off in May 2015 from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France and walked over 1,000km to Cape Finisterre in Spain. Walking tore a scab off his past and allowed him to reflect on the things he had done.

Grundling’s account is part memoir, part travel guide, with liberal doses of history in the mix. What really sets it apart, though, is his frank honesty about his life.

THE CROSSWAY by Guy Stagg, Picador, R178

Stagg is something of an outlier among modern-day pilgrims — not only because of the route he chose, but also his method.

By the age of 23, he had suffered three nervous breakdowns. “Afterwards I was afraid of the city, of lunchtime crowds and rush-hour trains. I went to work and sat senseless at my desk. I went to doctors and psychiatrists, and therapists.”

Finally, Stagg’s way out of depression was to walk the old pilgrim trails from England to Jerusalem, some 5,500km, during which he would rely on the charity of strangers. He could ask at churches on the way for shelter and help and, most of the time, he was received with kindness, or at least grudging acceptance.

What emerges is a powerful account of a man trying to fill the aching hollow in his life.

As always, wisdom comes from other people who have their stories to tell. You won’t find that in the daily commute to your office.

WALKING TO AUSTRALIA by David Robbins, Porcupine Press, R474

While not a walking book in the way the other two are, this is still a book about walking.

Robbins begins with the accepted premise that the world was populated by people who walked from Africa to Europe, the Americas and Asia. He then writes an explanation to his grandson about how people walked from Africa to Australia, and then follows some of the same paths himself.

He doesn’t do it on foot, or all the way — not least because our world has changed and it would be dangerous to do so.

Instead, he travels to places that those early walkers would have crossed and which we now call Ethiopia, Oman, Iran, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

While he did not actually walk that route, this is still a story of humankind’s greatest journey on foot, and ultimately also a story of self-discovery.