Recommend me a walking travel book that doesn't complain about feet!

[Threeforks]

Inspired a bit by Salt Path discussion. After yet another book with a great premise (The Path of Peace, about walking the route of the WW1 Western Front) that I've abandoned because of too much detail about the author's blisters and what feels like pages of description of feeling tired/wet/cold. It's hardly timeless prose, why do they do this?

Patrick Leigh Fermor is my gold standard at the moment. He was a complete arse by all accounts, but his writing is lyrical and wonderful and he doesn't go on his ailments or tedious logistics all the time. Who else have you found that writes like this - descriptive, interesting, and minimal navel gazing?

I don't know but great question! 😄

Dervla Murphy? There are several where she walked with her daughter. Plenty of blisters and other things, but they are minor inconveniences to her.

Ooh, didn't know she did walking as well as cycling!

Cheryl Strayed & Wild, obviously - a journey of self discovery as well as the Pacific Crest Trail

and
Windswept, by Annabel Abbs, which is about historical women walking (Frieda Lawrence, Georgia O’Keefe, about a half dozen more). Very good on how the experience is different for women. Not so much about feet!

Walk in the woods, by bill Bryson

I was going to recommend Fermor’s A Time of Gifts, but you mention him in the OP. So I recommend re-reading him instead 😁

I loved Wild but there is definitely a whole section on blisters and getting better boots sent to her!

I love Bill Bryson but he doesn’t necessarily talk about ‘the walk’ all of the time

Complete sympathy. I laboured right through the Path of Peace. Probably skimming near the end. I’m surprised Compeed didn’t sue him. I think if you write a book about walking you must be slightly self absorbed as I felt he was. I’ve just bought The Salt Path and am not full of hope for it.

If nothing else, this book will make you laugh out loud and enjoy the journey at the same time -

Spanish Steps by Tim Moore. About travelling the Camino in Spain with a donkey named Shinto. Absolutely delightful read, full of fun, facts, fellow pilgrims and very entertaining. Don't remember much about feet, hooves maybe? 😊

The US title of the book is “Travels with My Donkey: One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago

Agree completely about The Path of Peace. I did finish it but by then I could have happily finished off the author himself too with my own bare hands. He was such a whinger and his interspersing of his own luxury hotel stays and his daughter's wedding with the awful reality of what WWI must have been like just made it worse.
Phew, glad I got that off my chest. Agree too that PLF's writing is wonderful and am interested to hear other posters' recommendations.

Ah, I've found my people! I just checked Path of Peace in the charity bag and I got to page 74 before giving up 😳

@zenae Spanish Steps sounds great, I do love a pilgrimage!

I read and loved Red Dust recently, about a Chinese dissident who travelled through China in the early 80s. Very much a personal as well as a physical journey, but minimal focus on hardships - even though there were a lot between the lines.

Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.

I can't honestly rememer if he mentions his feet, but anyway the book is utterly charming. He undertook this journey in the 1930s, and when he wrote it in the 1960s he says it was already a vanished way of life due to the change in roads and traffic. He walked, he slept under hedges, he earnt some money here and there, he walked some more.

Travels With My Donkey - Tim Moore takes a donkey on the Camino Santiago (ETA - i see someone else has this with different titles. Weird.)
Long Road From Jarrow - Stuart Maconie

Love those two

haha came back to edit to say As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - you go for a hike and end up fighting in the Spanish Civil war, as you do - only to see the poster above did that while i was writing.

Alistair Humphreys has done a nice hommage to this where he retraces Lee’s steps in modern day Spain. To make it a proper challenge he denies himself much money and forces himself to earn his keep along the way by playing the violin - which he has only just learned. It’s an interesting concept and I admired the way he was willing to make himself very very uncomfortable.
« My Midsummer Morning. »

There is also « Tracks, » the story of the woman who walked across Australia with camels - it was made into a film about a decade ago but I haven’t read the book yet, it’s been on my TBR for years…

I met her once, and she said she was always astounded how many people said “Dervla with a bike” as she felt she’d walked more than she’d cycled!

Anna McNuff book the Pants of Perspective is more about her run / walking across New Zealand but I really enjoyed it and went on to read her other books cycling across S America and running bare foot through GB.

I think it was Tim Moore who wrote about cycling the Tour de France route which I enjoyed. Going to look up his walking book now!

I enjoyed Cheryl Strayed's book, but I seem to remember her complaining that her boots hurt her feet.

Great question. And agree with 'Wild' fans.

I read and enjoyed Clear Waters Rising by Nick Crane years ago, before he did TV. I've always meant to re-read it. Anyone out there want to encourage me or the OP?

Also, this is a bit left-field, but try Elizabeth von Arnim's 'Elizabeth's Adventures in Rugen'. The walks described are short and intermittent, but in those days (1901, Prussia) women didn't really do long treks. However, it's a great book with superb poetic descriptions AND it's funny.

I love Rory Stewart’s walking books - The Places In Between (across Afghanistan) and The Marches (the Scottish Borders, partly with his father).

Robert Macfarlane The Old Ways is great too.

WG Sebald, The Rings of Saturn.
It sounds like scifi or fantasy, but it isn't; it's essentially a walk book through East Anglia full of fascinating meanders. I'm pretty sure there are no feet mentioned.

Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.

It's been a while since I read this, and it is possible that he does mention his feet, but this is such an amusing, self-deprecating, entertaining book that it's still very worthwhile.

@MadameBethune
Ive recently finished reading this and loved it.
Strangely though I’m not mad on Vertigo by him.