Guidebook Excerpt:
BOOKS ABOUT WALKING IN ENGLAND
THESE ARE books to read before you go, and after you come back. They invite you take up your knapsack and set off across England, on your own two feet and in your own good time. Some are manuals for reference. Some are journals and stories. All bear witness to the courage, patience, imagination and humor of ordinary people -- travelers who set out on a simple adventure, and found they had become accidental pilgrims in spite of themselves.
In an age when "old" means last year's computer chip, and bestsellers are out of date a week after publication, perhaps it is good to recall British footpaths. They still bind the landscape together much as they did for the Romans, Saxons and Celts ... not to mention Norman lords and Neolithic farmers. These ancient paths remind us we are all part of the same human story, after all. Books about British footpaths seem to be as timeless as the paths themselves. They affirm life on a human scale, and a connection with the past that can be deeply reassuring. The stories, guides and journals of Alfred Wainwright, John Hillaby, Hunter Davies, Wilkie Collins and Dorothy Wordsworth -- to name only a few -- will be with us as long as England has stone walls in Yorkshire, mushrooms in Hampshire, and an English sunrise over the next hill. And if publishers stop publishing them, then people will hand-copy favorite stories and guides, or write their own, so they can relive serendipitous journeys that nourish their spirits and remind them that all the world and love can still be young. Walking books are England's literature of hope. |
