12 Books About Walking Worth Reading
Alex Cunningham
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Alex Cunningham
A good book about walking can make you want to pull on your boots and head straight out of the door. Others stay with you longer, changing the way you look at a familiar stretch of countryside.
There are books that capture the pleasure of a long-distance trail, complete with aching feet and unexpected encounters. Others explore the history of paths, the people who live alongside them, and the small details you only notice when travelling on foot.
We've brought together twelve books about walking, from much-loved classics to more recent accounts. Some are funny, some thoughtful, and a few might have you looking at the map for your next walk.
Bill Bryson's account of attempting the Appalachian Trail with his old friend Stephen Katz is one of the funniest books about long-distance walking.
Neither man is particularly well prepared for what lies ahead. There are questionable equipment purchases, uncomfortable nights and the growing realisation that the American wilderness is rather less accommodating than they had imagined.
Between the mishaps, Bryson explores the history and ecology of the Appalachian Mountains, giving the book considerably more depth than its comic beginnings suggest.
If you've ever questioned the wisdom of a walking holiday halfway up a particularly stubborn hill, you'll find plenty to recognise here.
Poet Simon Armitage sets out to walk the Pennine Way in the opposite direction to most people, travelling south from the Scottish border towards his Yorkshire home.
His arrangement is unusual. Along the route, he gives poetry readings in return for food, accommodation and whatever his audiences choose to contribute.
Some evenings are more successful than others. The weather is often uncooperative, the walking can be punishing, and his encounters with strangers provide much of the book's humour.
Armitage captures something familiar about long-distance walking: how a difficult day can be redeemed by a generous host, a good conversation or simply reaching somewhere warm and dry.
One of the newer additions to our list, The Parallel Path follows novelist Jenn Ashworth as she walks Wainwright's Coast to Coast across northern England.
After the restrictions of lockdown, Ashworth feels a growing need to escape the responsibilities of everyday life and undertake something entirely her own. Her journey takes her through the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors, but the book is concerned with more than the countryside.
She writes candidly about walking alone, physical discomfort, grief and the complicated relationship between independence and needing other people.
There is little attempt to romanticise the experience. Sometimes she's tired, uncertain or thoroughly fed up. It's this honesty that makes the book especially interesting.
If you've been considering Wainwright's Coast to Coast, Ashworth offers a contemporary and personal account of the journey.
Laurie Lee leaves his Gloucestershire village as a young man, setting off with a violin and very little money. His travels eventually take him through Spain in the years before the Spanish Civil War.
The world he describes is very different from the one we know today. Roads are quiet, distances feel greater, and finding food or somewhere to sleep often depends on the kindness of strangers.
Lee has a particular gift for bringing places and people to life. You can almost feel the heat rising from the Spanish roads and hear the conversations drifting through village squares.
It's a wonderful evocation of travelling slowly, when the journey itself matters more than any carefully arranged destination.
Have you ever followed an old track across a hillside and wondered how many people walked there before you?
That's the sort of question Robert Macfarlane explores in The Old Ways. He follows ancient paths, holloways and drove roads across Britain and farther afield, tracing the relationship between people and the routes they have travelled for centuries.
Along the way, he draws on literature, history and the natural world to understand why certain paths remain important long after their original purpose has disappeared.
The writing rewards a little time and attention. It's particularly absorbing if you enjoy the sense of continuity that comes with following a historic trail.
Coastal walking brings constant changes of perspective. A sheltered bay can give way to an exposed headland, with the next stretch of path disappearing over the cliffs.
In Coastlines, Patrick Barkham explores Britain's shores, looking beyond the familiar views to the wildlife, geology, history and communities that give the coastline its character.
His writing considers how people have lived alongside the sea, and how their relationship with it continues to change.
It's an engaging companion to coastal walking, particularly if you enjoy understanding what lies beyond the immediate view.
For anyone drawn to the rugged headlands and quiet inlets of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, Barkham's observations add another dimension to time spent beside the sea.
Nan Shepherd spent much of her life walking in Scotland's Cairngorm Mountains. Rather than concentrating on summits or records, she wanted to understand the mountains themselves.
The Living Mountain is a close observation of rock, water, weather and wildlife, written by someone who returned to the same hills throughout her life.
Shepherd notices things that can easily pass us by when we're concentrating on reaching the next landmark. The movement of water beneath ice, the changing quality of light, and the way familiar ground takes on a different character in poor weather.
It's a relatively short book, but one that encourages slower reading.
You may find yourself taking a little more time on your next mountain walk, simply to see what's around you.
The Lake District is familiar to generations of walkers, but James Rebanks presents it from a rather different perspective.
A shepherd whose family has farmed the Cumbrian fells for generations, Rebanks writes about the demands of working the land through the changing seasons.
There are sheep to gather, lambs to care for and countless jobs that continue regardless of the weather. His account reveals a landscape shaped by centuries of farming traditions, where the hills are a place of work as well as recreation.
It's worth reading before a walk through the Lake District, particularly if you've ever passed a farmer working on the fells and wondered what their day involves.
Rebanks reminds us that the countryside we enjoy walking through is also somewhere people live and work.
Christopher Somerville walks through the British Isles over the course of a year, following the changing seasons while reflecting on his relationship with his father.
The walks take him through very different surroundings, including the flooded countryside around the River Severn and the seabird cliffs of Shetland.
Alongside his observations of wildlife, history and landscape, Somerville returns to memories of his father, whose own love of walking helped shape their relationship.
The result is a thoughtful book about family, memory and the places that stay with us.
It's also a reminder that walking doesn't have to be reserved for summer. Familiar paths have a different character in winter rain, spring sunshine or the shorter days of autumn.
George Borrow travelled through Wales during the nineteenth century, recording his encounters with local people, their language and the countryside.
Wild Wales offers a fascinating glimpse of the country before modern transport changed the experience of travelling between its towns and villages.
Borrow was particularly interested in Welsh culture and language, and his conversations with the people he met are often as entertaining as his descriptions of the landscape.
His opinions are sometimes distinctly Victorian, and some passages are best read with that in mind. Nevertheless, the book remains a valuable portrait of Wales at a particular moment in its history.
For anyone who enjoys Welsh walking, it's interesting to compare Borrow's experiences with the places and communities you encounter today.
Peter Fiennes takes an unusual approach to exploring Britain. Rather than choosing a conventional walking route, he follows the journeys of writers who travelled through the country before him.
His literary companions include Gerald of Wales, who travelled through Wales in the twelfth century, alongside writers from more recent times.
Fiennes uses their books, letters and observations to explore how Britain's towns, countryside and communities have changed.
The appeal lies in seeing familiar places through the eyes of someone who visited decades or even centuries earlier.
It's an entertaining mixture of travel writing, literary history and thoughtful observation, with plenty to interest anyone who enjoys discovering the stories behind a landscape.
Not every memorable walking journey happens in real life.
In Rachel Joyce's novel, recently retired Harold Fry leaves home to post a letter to an old friend who is seriously ill. Instead of putting it in the postbox, he decides to deliver it himself.
What follows is an extraordinary walk across England, undertaken in entirely unsuitable shoes and with almost no preparation.
As Harold travels, he meets strangers, reflects on his marriage and begins to confront memories he has long avoided.
There are moments of gentle humour alongside some genuinely moving passages.
Although the story is fictional, Joyce captures something recognisable about walking: how an ordinary day can take an unexpected turn, and how travelling on foot creates time to think.
One of the pleasures of reading about walking is recognising something of your own experience in another person's journey.
It might be the relief of reaching an inn after a wet afternoon, the satisfaction of completing a difficult stretch, or the unexpected conversation that becomes one of your favourite memories of a holiday.
Other books introduce you to places you've never visited. You begin to recognise the names of hills and villages, imagine the route across the map, and wonder what it would be like to follow the path yourself.
And sometimes a book simply encourages you to return to somewhere familiar, with a little more curiosity about what you might find.
If your reading has given you somewhere new to explore, take a look at our self-guided walking holidays across the British Isles and Europe.