The walker’s bookshelf

To some it’s putting one foot in front of the other, to these writers it’s much, much more...

A WALK IN THE WOODS,

by Bill Bryson

‘Ha, it‘s like that bit in

A Walk in the Woods’–

buying gear, slogging up hills, or realising walking is ‘quite wonderful, really’, Bryson just gets it. His account of tackling America’s 2000-mile Appalachian Trail is hilarious, but it’s serious too, about the often troubling history of these woods and the risks posed by climate change.

THE OLD WAYS

by Robert Macfarlane First came Mountains of the Mind, then The Wild Places, and this, the third in ‘a loose trilogy about landscape and the human heart’, wends through time and place on Britain’s historic routes – from the peat and ancient gneiss of the Outer Hebrides to the chalk of south-east England’s Icknield Way. It’s poetic, scholarly, and utterly fascinating, and if you’ve read all three in this trilogy, Macfarlane’s latest book Underland is now out in paperback.

JOURNEY THROUGH BRITAIN

by John Hillaby

To open any page is to feel the breeze in your hair, see a mix of sunshine and uncertain clouds on the horizon, and feel the excitement of what’s round the next corner in the company of someone who feels like you do, but knows quite a lot more. Hillaby’s curiosity opened up everything he saw on his 1100-mile walk, and made a long British walk seem a real adventure.

WILD

by Cheryl Strayed

A bestseller made into a film: Wild brought hiking mainstream. At 26, after the sudden loss of her mother, and marriage, Strayed set out on America’s Pacific Crest Trail: the book is less about the scenery and more about Strayed’s journey and the redemptive power of a 1000+ mile walk. It’s unsparingly frank, and powerful for it.

THE SALT PATH

by Raynor Winn

What would you do if you lost your home and your spouse was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease? Winn glimpsed Mark Wallington’s book,

in a packing case and she, with seriously-ill husband Moth, decided to walk and camp the 630-mile South West Coast Path. The book – written first for Moth, later published at their daughter’s suggestion – is honest, tender, lyrical, inspiring, and a long-time bestseller.

MAP ADDICT

by Mike Parker

Like any good map, this book leads you down all sorts of winding routes, from Parker’s teenage predilection for shoplifting maps to the Ordnance Survey’s obsessive attempts to map every nobble and bobble of Britain, from carta erotica (maps and sex) to pratnav (the digital revolution). It’s jammed with geeky trivia and good humour, and fans will also enjoy Parker’s ‘blistering’ book about the nation’s footpaths, The Wild Rover.

THE FIRST FIFTY

by Muriel Gray

In the 1980s Gray hosted The Munro Show on TV and this is the book that followed: a brilliantly funny account of climbing Scotland’s biggest hills by someone who doesn’t fit the anoraked stereotype of the Munro bagger. Adventure, misadventure, elation, vertigo, eagles, and tomato soup: it’s all there. Out of print, available secondhand.

THE LIVING MOUNTAIN

by Nan Shepherd

For 40 years, the manuscript lay in a drawer – perhaps because novelist and poet, Shepherd, wasn’t sure who would publish her meditation on Scotland’s Cairngorm Mountains. Finally printed in 1977, the slim volume now has a devoted – and growing – readership, beloved for its exquisite prose, and Shepherd’s desire not to ‘conquer’, but to intimately understand one of Britain’s harshest landscapes.

I BELONG HERE

by Anita Sethi

In May 2019, Sethi was racially abused on a train, when a man launched a verbal attack telling her to ‘go back to where you’re from’. He was arrested, but it left Manchester-born Sethi with severe anxiety; later that summer she decided to walk along the Pennines, the Backbone of England, to explore its history, natural and human, and say ‘I belong here’. Although triggered by trauma, Sethi’s book is full of hope.