Sleep Walking

'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.

I really wanted to like this book, but I struggled with the writing style and on the whole found it quite... samey.  To be fair, I think the former is more about me than the author.  The sentences are long and the imagery wonderfully lyrical, but when prose is always like that, it becomes hard work.  I found I just wanted to get to the end and have a rest, not unlike the author after his 265 mile journey.  It was quite good at helping me nod off though.

Also, I don't feel that I learned anything from reading this book.  Nothing is really achieved - except possibly some serious physical damage to the author's lower back - and I don't feel any particular observation was made or epiphany realised.  OK, Armitage proved that it was possible to pay your way with poetry in the modern era, but so few big names bother to perform outside a handful of Devon and Somerset cities that of course the actual Poet Laureate visiting remote areas will attract audiences.

Overall, although I enjoyed many of the metaphors, I found 'Walking Away' quite boring and pointless.  Perhaps I was expecting too much from it, perhaps I'd have enjoyed it more if I were an Armitage fan, but beyond supporting an independent Cornish bookshop through it's purchase, I don't really think it got me anywhere.  Ah, well.

Now, what next..?

This post is based on the paperback edition of 'Walking Away' by Simon Armitage, published by Faber & Faber in 2016.  It was bought from the lovely Falmouth Bookseller bookshop in Cornwall.  For details, visit www.falmouth-bookseller.co.uk.