Walking home by Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage is a poet born in the village of Marsden on the Pennine Way, reckoned to be one of the tougher long distance paths in Great Britain. For the purposes of this book Armitage decided to walk the way and perform poetry each evening to see if he could be financially self sufficient (hence the sub-title Travels with a Troubador). This book simply tells the story of his walk and the recitals that were integral to it.

   Armitage is not a natural walker and I suspect that many more experienced in the gentle art of plodding may find some of his descriptions a little overwrought or dramatic, none-the-less there can be few walkers who haven't felt the familiar tendrils of dread enveloping us once the cloud descends on a rain soaked moor! As both a performer and narrator he is self effacing and the gentle vein of humour that runs through the book takes the edge of what can be, occasionally, the necessarily repetitious nature of a fortnight or so walking and then reading poems. In style it reminded me a little of Bill Bryson although I think the latter has a sharper observational eye for the absurd.

   Our narrator does not walk alone. He actively encourages a safety blanket of knowing locals, Pennine Way Rangers and any of the odds and sods attending his readings that he can persuade (after a pint or two)  that a day on the Way was better than their previously planned alternative. The characters travel writers meet in books always seem to have decidedly more eccentricities than those I come cross but they add colour to the pages and the affection Armitage feels for them is clear in his prose and the reported snippets of conversation.

   Walking home is not a literary masterpiece, it won't be edging it's way onto the shelves populated by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Robert MacFarlane or Norman Lewis, but it is a good paperback read. I can see myself sitting by a log burner in a hostel with my socks gently steaming dry and turning over a page or two as I pass an undemanding evening. The book made me feel as if I wanted to get back out there and, even more meaningfully, get back out there on a long distance path......The twist at the end of the story disappointed and perplexed me but it didn't detract from the fact that the time i had spent getting their had been very agreeable indeed.

The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane

"Much has been written of travel, far less of the road"

Edward Thomas-The Icknield Way 1913

I have recently finished reading The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane. It is quite simply, a stunning book and one that should be on the bookshelf of every walker and outdoor enthusiast. In the book the author sets out to explore, "the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads and sea paths that form part of a vast network of routes criss-crossing the British landscape and its waters." In addition to his exploration of the ancient landscapes of Britain he strays further afield looking at how pathways in Palestine are linked to a sense of a whole people's historical identity. He visits the mountains of Spain and the Himalayas, all the time linking the pathways on which he treads to their history and the history of the landscape around them and the people who have used it and called it home.
MacFarlane writes economically and beautifully, he brings vividly to live the sheer "joie de vivre" that simply putting one foot in front of another can awaken in us. He sleeps rough in wild landscapes, wakes (literally) with the larks and furnishes an obsession with great wanderers of the past including, most notably, the soldier poet, Edward Thomas. He tackles the Icknield Way, a route which claims to be Britain's oldest roadway and existed long before the Romans came to Britain, he risks the "Broomway", a perilous and deadly path fringed by quicksand and susceptible to the racing tides of the Essex coast and he tramps the Cairngorms en route to the funeral of his Grandfather, a man of mountainous country.
 In addition to the delightful company of MacFarlane himself, the reader is introduced to a cast of "wanderers, wayfarers, pilgrims, guides, shamans, poets, trespassers and devouts". As well as Thomas who used walking to try and counteract the fierce depressions that blighted his life, we are introduced to the sinister, dour Guga men (gannet hunters) of Ness, to Steve Dilworth a reclusive Shaman and artist of the Outer Hebrides and to Raja Shehadeh who has been walking the paths of Ramallah in Palestine over forty years of war and peace.
The book finishes with the author on the coast near Formby, a few miles from Liverpool. He is crossing the Formby silts where footprints of humans and animals made over 5000 years ago have been preserved in the mud and are periodically uncovered by the tides and the elements. The final chapter neatly ties all the threads of this fascinating book together as MacFarlane literally walks step for step with a man who died 3000 years before the birth of Christ. These landscapes we choose to walk in and explore our not ours, they are part of a vast unending history of journeys. Journeys taken for pleasure, out of necessity, in hope, in desperation, alone, with others, with a defined end and everlasting. We would do well to remember that and feel humbled by it.

All quotes are taken from the book itself.