Will I love Walking Home?

A man walking down the Pennine Way, from Kirk Yetholm to Edale, mostly on his own but sometimes with some other people. In early summer, the reasonably dry early summer of 2010.

The difference is that he's doing it without any money at all, relying on the kindness of strangers to put a few bob in an old sock. The other difference: he was the UK's future Poet Laureate. 

Whatever my current passion, from mountaineering to grafting apple trees to hiking, I like to immerse myself in the literature. Simon Armitage’s account of The Pennine Way in the Peak District (UK) is one of my favorite walking memoirs and is informative, eclectic, and funny. In addition, the route starts only a few miles from my house.

I’m walking it with my wife, in sections, so we might meet you on the way! If you’re not a walker, Walking Home may inspire you to start—even to set out on a long-distance footpath.

This is one of the best books I have read about a long walk – in this case, the poet laureate Simon Armitage’s account of the 19 days he spent walking the Pennine Way, beginning at its northern extremity and ending up near his home in West Yorkshire. This is not a precious, solipsistic memoir of the sort favoured by many of our celebrated New Nature Writers, but a wonderfully droll account of what was often a hard slog, where at the end of each day Armitage, who set off without any money, sings for his supper, reading poetry in… show more.