'Walking Away' by Simon Armitage (Faber & Faber, 2015)
Being stuck inside, I thought that the logical thing to do was read something that took me to the great outdoors. So I picked up 'Walking Away' by Simon Armitage, hiker, Yorkshireman and Poet Laureate.
'Walking Away' is the follow up to 'Walking Home', the story of Armitage's 2010 hike along the Pennine Way as an itinerant poet, performing recitals for bed, board and whatever audiences were willing to donate. In late summer 2013, he repeated the exercise along the northern section of the South West Coast Path, starting at Butlins in Minehead and aiming for the Scilly Isles off the toe tip of Cornwall. Along the way, he suffers the extremes of British weather, traverses tourist hotspots and rural idylls, and rhymes for his supper every step of the way.
