Walking Home

By Simon Armitage,

Book cover of Walking Home: A Poet's Journey

Book description

The wandering poet has always been a feature of our cultural imagination. Odysseus journeys home, his famous flair for storytelling seducing friend and foe. The Romantic poets tramped all over the Lake District searching for inspiration. Now Simon Armitage, with equal parts enthusiasm and trepidation, as well as a wry…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Walking Home as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

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.

From James' list on to take on a walking holiday.

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…

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