Books about Walking
- The Complete Guide to Walking, Mark Fenton, The Lyons Press, 2001
Written by an editor at Walking magazine, this comprehensive how to guide, takes you from inertia to regular walking. Exceptionally useful book aimed at the beginning walker or occasional exerciser.
An out of shape British advertising executive and his French wife hoist rucksacks and walk from Gruissan-Plage near Narbonne to Capbreton north of Bayonne, a distance of 553 km. Their route takes them mostly along country roads through farm villages. It’s hot, dusty but they slake their thirst with lots of wine.
A woman artist walks alone through the Pyrenees Piedmont from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and copes with a broken wrist and encounters with wild boars. Recipes and culinary lore included. Illustrated with maps, photos and drawings.
Account of a foot trek in rural Spain originally published in 1928. An adept prose stylist, the young Pritchett isn’t above accepting a lift now and then in his progress from Badajoz to Leon. He’s poor, but richer than the people he bunks down and eats with in a Spain still steeped in suspicion for outsiders.
The voyage is a paddling excursion along the Sambre and Oise Rivers in Belgium and Northern France. The travels are about walking with a donkey through central and southern France. His fragility and easy going voice make RLS an endearing companion.
Published in 1967, this account of a camping trek through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River involves prodigious logistics for food and water drops. Animals and Fletcher’s imagination are the only companions on this hike through geologic time.
A masochist, but a funny one, British adventurer Snow walked from the antipodes of South America through the continent northwards to cross the Panama Canal, his line of demarcation. Never accepting a ride, marching at a furious pace burdened by heavy gear and always low on water, Snow was lucky to survive. His mighty will drove him on. The photographs of his feet during the painful weeks of his non-stop walk will put you off hiking forever.
British traveler sets off to tour various regions of France on foot. He’s interested in people, customs and history and tells unusual lore in a cheerful voice. Most of the walks are suitable for long weekends.
- Walking Tour in Southern France, Ezra Pound. edited and introduced by Richard Sieburth, New Directions, NY, 1992.
The controversial American modernist poet toured France on foot during the 1920s in search of traces of the Troubadours.
