Halfman, Halfbook

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

A wren is normally a very difficult bird to see, but you know they are there because of the noise that they can make. How a bird that tiny can have such a loud song is surreal. Hoffman is lucky enough to see one wren one day, and then he sees another, and another. They are all heading towards an abandoned swallow’s nest, probably to keep warm in the approaching winter storm that is about to hit Prespa.

How Julian Hoffman and his wife ended up in this part of Greece is quite a story, but it began with a book by Giorgos Catsadorakis called Prespa: A Story of Man and Nature. Hoffman and his wife managed to read the entire book as well as polish off two bottles of wine, and not only did they want to visit the place, but they had decided that they wanted to leave London and move there.

It would be a huge, but exciting step into the unknown.

They arrived at a guest house in the village of Agios Germanos a little while after. The proprietor of the establishment asked them how long they were thinking of staying, and they told him they intended to move there for good. Vassilis took on the task of finding them a permanent place to live. It took a while, but he succeeded. They piled their scant belongings in the corner of the house and began their new life.

The village that he lives in is shaped by the mountains and the lakes. They are known as ancient lakes, and there are only a few that are this old around the world. The great age means that the diversity of plants and other life is huge. It is something that he comes to appreciate as he walks through past ancient junipers and into an oak forest. But it is also a reminder that the old ecosystems are equally reliant on human presence and that the absence of people can cause other pressures.

They slowly met the village residents, and Germano finally got to use the one English phrase that he had learnt on them! He was one of those who, after WWII, had been forced to go into exile. When he returned to Greece a while later, he was interred and then tortured for being on the other side ideologically, all accused with scant evidence. Even though the residents are Greek, they don’t necessarily feel a strong allegiance to the home country; rather, they have an empathy with people who are just across the border from them, as they know they are all in it together.

Hoffman delves into his past, explaining how he went from liking to natural world to loving it. It happened on a trip to India, and he can pinpoint the exact moment to when he saw some Sarus cranes. It was a moment that he knew changed his life and new him a new purpose and direction.

The village that they reside in, is described as remote. However, back in the 1990s, it was also restricted; permits needed to be applied for and approved before you could travel there because it shares borders with Albania and Macedonia. These restrictions have eased, but there are still times when people need to take a madcap route to get from one place to another rather than being able to cross the border directly.

Their first years in Prespa, they grew their own vegetables organically and even made a business from it. It was tough work, though and a very steep learning curve. However, working the land this way connected them to the place on a deeper level. They would find traces of the past in their ground, too; coins and bullet cases would regularly come up as they dug the soil over.

This part of Greece gets very cold; not only do they have to put up with snow most winters, but if they are not careful, they can get frozen pipes that can take a month to thaw out. Water is a precious resource up there; they used the local river to irrigate their land and closely followed the local rules for equality. They would find that some would take more than their fair share and it would cause all manner of issues, and is kind of a reflection of what is happening elsewhere in the world.

Getting to know the residents of the village is the key that unlocks the history of the place. Stories of the first road being built and learning about the way that the water levels in the lake have risen and fallen over time taught them so much. They were helped out at one particular incident by their neighbours and were left shaken and grateful for all the assistance they received.

One of things that always surprises me about the pictures that Hoffman posts on his social media channels is just how much snow he gets there. He lives in a Mediterranean country (albeit at altitude) and gets loads, and I live in Dorset, and we get almost no snow here now. When they first moved, the summers used to be wonderful there, but with climate change, it is becoming far more dangerous with higher temperatures and numerous wildfires in the region, as well as droughts, floods and intense hail. Events that used to occur once a lifetime are now becoming more frequent. Scientist can predict that the frequency of these events will increase; what they can’t predict is how many there will be or their intensity.

In one part of the narrative, Hoffman writes about the COVID pandemic. How surreal the various lockdowns and restrictions that were imposed on populations by governments and health professionals as we tried to get a grip on the virus. It reminds him of the stories that his great-grandfather told him about being interred during World War 1, not because of anything that he had done, but because of where he had happened to come from. He posed no threat, but the authorities at the time decided not to take a chance with him and many others.

In their second year growing organic food, they had a massive shock when their biggest customer said that they didn’t need anything over the summer. So, they started preserving food and sales of these would become the bulk of their income in time. Sadly, even that came to an end as the financial crisis of 2008 bit.

Unsure about what to do next, they considered emigrating to Canada, but dithered over the decision. That dithering was a blessing in disguise, as an opportunity to do conservation work and ornithological surveys arose. They now had a more secure future and could stay in their village. His wife ended up managing a bear diet study, which meant collecting lots of bear scat (ye,s they do crap in the woods and lots of other places too). Living near bears and wolves has its own pressures, and Hoffman has a couple of really close encounters. Local farmers see them as a threat, and unless compensation schemes are quick to pay for losses, farmers tend to take matters into their own hands, with inevitable, tragic endings.

Brexit (sigh) adds another layer of complexity to them living in Greece. They and many others had the right to live in the country until we took the stupid decision to leave. To stay, they need to undertake citizenship, and whilst waiting at the hotel near where this takes place, they are distracted by the number of kestrels whizzing by.

It would be a back injury that would spell the end of their small holding, and Hoffman needs a trip to the local hospital for medical intervention. While in the hospital, he was given a pen and a pad, and he began his writing journey, starting with a story about pelicans, and ending up with this, his third book, and this doesn’t feel like this is the end of his writing journey.

Giorgos Catsadorakis’ book was what inspired them to make this journey to Prespa, and he was passionate about the pelicans of the lake, too. So much so that Catsadorakis persuaded the fishermen to be proud of them and not see them as a threat to their livelihood. It worked, though sadly, the pelicans now have multiple threats from climate change, HN51 and the lake water levels that are causing havoc.

People raise their voices against things; we rarely raise them for.

This is a lovely book about the path that Hoffman took to find a place to live in the world. Prespa is his anchor point, and it gives him the strength to move around the world, knowing that he still has that Lifeline attached. It is very well written, too. Having heard him speak at a book event, he is very knowledgeable about all sorts of things, and that same well of information comes across in this book. If I were to have one minor gripe about the book, it didn’t follow a linear timeline, which is my personal preference; it is wide-ranging and jumps around a fair amount. If you are looking for a book that combines a heady blend of travel, natural history and environmental concerns, then this should be on your reading list.

Another month rolls by, and another almost the same totally unrealistic TBR appears that is very similar to last month! No idea how many of these I’ll get through, but I hope at least 15!

Daily Reading

A Tree A Day – Amy-Jane Beer

An Insect a Day: Bees, Bugs, And Pollinators For Every Day Of The Year – Dominic Couzens & Gail Ashton

Still Reading

Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar Hardcover – Nick Garbutt

The Spymasters: How The CIA’s Directors Shape History And The Future – Chris Whipple

Themed Reads

When the Rivers Run Dry: Water – The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century – Fred Pearce

The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future – David Wallace-Wells

Letters to the Earth: Writing Inspired by Climate Emergency – Various

Plus If I can get to these:

Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation – Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

Banksy: The Man Behind The Wall – Will Elsworth Jones

The Fifth Risk – Michael Lewis

Constable: Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings – Leslie Parris

Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain – Pen Vogler

Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI – James Muldoon, Mark Graham & Callum Cant

#20BooksOfSummer (I know it isn’t summer anymore…)

The Cruel Stars – John Birmingham

The Solar War – A.G. Riddle

Cage of Souls – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Jade City – Fonda Lee

The Old Drift – Namwali Serpell

World From My Armchair

The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country – Helen Russell

Along the River that Flows Uphill: From the Orinoco to the Amazon – Richard Starks

Review Books

Small Earthquakes: A Journey Through Lost British History In South America – Shafik Meghji

21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari

Your Journey Your Way: The Recovery Guide to Mental Health – Horatio Clare

Doomed Romances: Strange Tales of Uncanny Love – Joanne Ella Parsons

Phantoms of Kernow – Joan Passey (Ed)

Return of the Ancients: Unruly Tales of the Mythological Weird – Katy Soar  (Ed)

Books I’m clearing

Weather – Storm Dunlop

Dilbert 2.0 – Scott Adams

Russians Among Us – Gordon Corera

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History – Lea Ypi

Library Books

Stone Lands: A Journey Of Darkness And Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places – Fiona Robertson

The Ponies At The Edge Of The World: A Story of Hope and Belonging in Shetland – Catherine Munro

Nature Needs You: The Fight To Save Our Swifts – Hannah Bourne- Taylor

Sea Bean: A Beachcombers Search for Magical Charm – Sally Huband

Poetry

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud – Ana Sampson (Ed)

Book Club

Never Had a Dad – Georgie Cudd

So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Ian Carter had lived in Norfolk and then Devon for a while. Both were nice places to live, but they didn’t feel wild enough for Carter. This nagging feeling was not helped by trips to the West of Scotland; it is a land that is still shaped by humans, but it felt so much wilder than Devon. It took half an hour of mooching around the garden to make the inevitable decision, they were going to have to move to the west of Scotland and specifically Galloway.

They are fortunate to find a house that meets their requirements and constraints. Within a few minutes’ walk from the house, he can feel properly in a wild space. If he walks for 45 minutes, there is no sign of roads and cars and not a hint of a man-made sound. This is not a guidebook of the region, more of a story of the first months there and the discoveries that he makes.

After unpacking and settling in, he discovers that one of his favourite authors, Derek Ratcliffe, had written a book, Galloway and the Borders, and he didn’t have a copy. This omission was quickly rectified. As Carter read his new book, he learnt of Ratcliff’s passion for the uplands of the region and the pleasure he got from observing the wildlife, a similar theme to his other books.

Carter roams widely from his home, a luxury afforded to him by the progressive laws in Scotland on access to the countryside. A frequent route covered is over the burn and then heading straight up hill. The wildlife that he ends up seeing tends to wander all over the place rather than sticking just to one particular place. He dips into the National Atlas of Birds published in 1976, and it is a bleak reminder of scarce gains and massive losses that have happened in the past four decades.

Carter devotes a whole chapter to the red squirrel. He has six regular visitors to his garden, and he has learnt to recognise them. They are clinging on there, but the threat of the grey squirrels and the illness they can pass on is never far away.

Even though finding the wild here is easier than in Devon, it is still not a true wilderness. That has long gone from this country, with almost every square metre having been affected by humans at some point. It is rural, and there are lots of farms around, and they squeeze as much as they can from the land. The modern farm vehicles are huge so they can reach all parts of the fields nowadays, and there are small areas that are left untouched.

The sika plantations are cool, dark and slightly oppressive places. Carter considers them an alien eyesore on the uplands of Galloway. That said, he does recommend visiting one, though, for the assault on the senses that you get. Above these areas are places that couldn’t be planted, so they have been rewilding themselves. Carter likes this part of the landscape, though he keeps a careful eye out for adders when scrambling up.

He takes a longer trip up into the hills with an overnight stay. He is aiming to look for glow worms, but he wants to take time to look at the wider landscape and visit an ancient hillfort. It gives him time to consider the ongoing debate on what is or isn’t an alien species. He mentions The New Wild by Fred Pearce, which, if you haven’t read it, is an excellent book.

It takes him 90 minutes to walk from his home to the cliffs. These face the Atlantic and suffer the wrath of the storms that roll in each year. It is also a haven for seabirds that nest on the cliffs and fly out to the open ocean to feed. He enjoys spending time there watching them returning to feed their chicks. Just off the coast is Heston Island, and accessible when the tide is low. He spends a night there and, as well as the numerous seabirds, sees otters and porpoises.

He shares his new home with two species of bats, and their garden is host to red squirrels, badgers and pine martens and lots of different species of birds. Lots of small birds bring in the raptors, and he frequently sees sparrow hawks and peregrines passing by.

The area that he has chosen to live in has a little bit of everything. The hills in the distance are not quite mountains, but they feel like it after climbing them. Up there, you used to be able to see eagles, but they were harried and persecuted to the point of extinction in the white-tailed eagles case. Thanks to reintroductions and public opinion taking a really dim view of illegal killings of these magnificent birds, they are making a comeback.
The drystone walls here are hundreds of years old, and they have developed their own ecosystem. They are not as old as the scrap of woodland nearby. This is a remnant of temperate rain forest left over from the larger woods that cover the area.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

It is kind of fitting that at the beginning of Matthew Yeomans’ walk around Wales, it begins in a rainy gloom. He is in Cas-Gwent (Chepstow) in his friend, Andy’s, kitchen, drinking coffee and peering out the window at the rain.

They decide that waiting for fine weather might take a while, they don their waterproofs, and step out of the warm house into the rain. At the start of the trail, there is a stone monolith and a metal sculpture that Yeoman describes as being similar to a baked potato in foil. The other odd this about this coastal path is that they are two miles from the coast. Details…
This part of the coast is not renowned for its beauty, however, it is rich in history. It is rich in historic sites, and finds there have been artefacts discovered all the way back to the Neolithic.
They get wet again. They pass some guys from Bristol who are fishing, who, from what they tell them, have not had any luck catching anything. It is not long before they pass some of the locals, who are also fishing, who tell them that the other guys are fishing in completely the wrong place…

Yeoman and his friend, Jeff, are now walking in a gale (this isn’t selling a walking holiday in Wales to me!!). Approaching Cardiff, they come across a note saying that the path is closed for emergency flood defence work. A reminder that climate change is upon us and not going away. They take an inland detour, and it means that they can stop at the Royal Oak pub, one of Jeff’s old haunts.

Whilst they are in Cardiff, he explores the coastal areas and looks at what the authorities are doing to stop flooding. He walks along the canal that was built to transport bulk materials to the port for export and ends up at the enormous Bute East Dock. The barrage they have built seems to be helping, but how it will cop in the future is anyone’s guess.
It was at Lavernock Point that Marconi demonstrated to the world his radio transmission invention. They take a path with a dead end on a sign and inevitably end up walking back. Amusingly, on the back of that sign is another that says ‘told you so’. They walk through an area called The Bendricks; turns out to be a section of prehistoric cliffs dating back to the Triassic period. They are soon walking through Barry Island, best known for the sitcom Gavin and Stacey, something that I have never watched, before they head onto the Glamorgan Heritage Coast. Known for smuggling in the past it is now suffering from coastal erosion.

Port Talbot is not a place that conjures up picturesque scenes with it ominous steel works looming over the town. There are two possible routes that they can take, and they decide on the lower route. It is as grim as they are expecting, but they are assured by other walkers that it does improve. And it does.
Revisiting Rotherslade Rock brings back childhood memories. It is a place that he brought his own kids back to and watches them climb the same rock that he did as a kid. This part of Wales has a strong Anglican feel to it. This was because the Welsh often rebelled and the Norman invaders imposed a strong control on the area. Returning to Pobbles Bay Beach reminded him just how awful it was for playing cricket.

He picks his way across a salt marsh and passes Tinopolis or Llanelli as it is more commonly known. His walking companion for this stage is his son, and they embark on a very personal pilgrimage to see where his grandparents were married. They walk as far as they are able through the Castlemartin firing rang,e where the wildlife flourishes amongst the ordinance.
Pembrokeshire is a wild and beautiful place. Or it was when I visited a couple of years ago. Yeomans is there to walk part of the path conceived by Ronald Lockley, who was a guy who ended up on Skokholm and became an expert in the birds that were there. Milford Haven is the location of an oil refinery, and it was where a tanker spilt 72,000 tonnes of crude oil in the mid-1990s. Wildlife was devastated at the time, but then recovered enough to then suffer water temperatures that were 5 °C higher because of climate change. They then walk through the last place that a foreign power tried to invade.

Living by the sea brings forth stories that are, in essence, true, but are steeped in the folklore of the sea. This part of Wales is no different. There are stories of giants, lost lands, mermaids and old magic. Golf links are found by the shore, and it is thought that these will go as the sea level rises, a problem brought home when he is asked to map a new route for the Wales Coast path. The next stage of his walk passes Portmeirion and onto Port Madoc, where the cliffs are battered constantly by the waves. We will have to see how Wales and the UK cope and adapt in the coming years.
It was a fire at an RAF site that began Welsh nationalism and marked the start of the pushback against English domination. Like the West Country, Wales also has a big problem with second home ownership and locals are priced out of the market. Second homes are now being taxed more, but if this will have the desired effect and money is fed back into the local economy, only time will tell. People who want to live there now can’t, as a £20k salary isn’t going to buy a £1m house.

Yeomans is now in hill country, as he discovers as he walks up the road to Trefor; it nearly kills his legs! He is fast approaching the island of Ynys Mon. He can cross a bridge to get there now; previously, he would have had to cross by boat, and the tides are treacherous. It is the place where one of the first environmental protection laws was passed. Elizabeth the First ordered the dunes to be replanted with marram grass and to punish those who were caught stealing it.

Smuggling was rife back in the 18th century; illicit goods would be shipped from the Isle of Man. It was lucrative and dangerous and could be deadly. One group of smugglers used the power of their women, who were believed to be witches; a curse from them would deter most people. It was a shipwreck here that gave us the Met Office and the beginnings of weather prediction.
Yeomans has finally reached the last leg of his walk. He thinks about the parts that he has enjoyed walking through, even though he has only covered about half of the full 870 miles. It is enough to see the havoc that climate change will bring to this coastline.

This was an enjoyable book in lots of ways. His account of the places that he walks through and descriptions of the things he sees are really good. He brings to life the richly layered history of the country. The other focus of the book is the grim realities of climate change, rising sea levels and coastal erosion, which, while we need to know about it, makes for less enjoyable reading. I live fairly close to the coast and it makes for sobering reading. I like Yeomans’ writing, it feels like a conversation in a pub garden, overlooking the sea whilst the sun goes down. He is not confrontational about climate change, just exasperated that governments are still dithering while it accelerates. Well worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Immigration is in the news constantly at the moment. But the facts are often obscured by the various agendas that particular news agencies wish to push.
This story is about a group of Africans who are hoping to cross the straights of Gibraltar into Europe with the hope of making a new life there.

The narrator and his cousin are waiting in a café, and Red is crapping himself, so much so that the trafficker is threatening to leave him behind. They are an eclectic group of people, including one guy who has been deported three times from Europe, is still waiting to go back again. It was hard to say if it was nerves or the anticipation that was driving them.

Reda had a troubled upbringing and then suffered the tragic loss of his mother. It was to affect him deeply for the rest of his life.

Nura is bringing a baby with her, and the baby keeps crying, which worries the trafficker. They put both of them under an upturned boat, and the baby calms. She is hoping to find her husband in Europe; he has been there for a year now, but she has heard nothing from him. If she were to find him, she would give him the news that he was a father.

Yussef was waiting in the café because of a tragedy of his doing that had befallen his family. There was nothing left for him in Africa and no reason to stay.
The man mountain that was, Pafadnan, seemed calm and serene. Now he was suffering from some sort of seizure or panic attack, which was worrying to say the least. He is calmed by another member of the party.

Yarge had been employed by the rich white men and was working in a privileged position. Until one day, he wasn’t. He had saved all that he had earned to be able to make this trip.

For the group, waiting to travel is worse than travelling. The anticipation is cut short by the fear of being caught or the boat getting into trouble at sea. The narrator has time to look back over his past life, reliving the memories that were seared into his mind.

They are a snapshot of the people in Africa who are desperate enough to want to leave their present circumstances behind and who have been seduced by the promise of a better life in Europe. However, what they see in the media and online is utterly unlike the life that they will have should they make it across the straits. The moment comes, and the trafficker moves them into the boat. They are all holding onto that promise they made themselves about that new life in Europe.

This is a poignant book in lots of ways. It highlights just how desperate some people are to leave their current situation for all manner of reasons. They see the life that they could have in Europe, focusing on the good parts and ignoring the rumours and the bad stories that they hear. To make that change is to take an enormous risk at great cost. Not just financially, but emotionally, leaving behind a life they knew for one that holds all sorts of perils.

Quite how the author manages to portray all of this in such a short book is quite astonishing. In all this drama, he writes with compassion and empathy; we know this is one ending of their lives. He makes the tension palpable; I felt that I was waiting with them on the beach; their back stories add context and show us the reason why they have made this choice. But their fear of the unknown is evident in all the characters, too. It is a chance they would regret not taking. Well worth reading and can recommend reading it alongside We Came By Sea by Horatio Clare, which is real-life stories of boat people and the individuals they deal with as they try to settle in this country.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

The network of English footpaths is not only extensive, but it is a walked record of human history in these isles, going back thousands of years in some cases. I have walked along some of the holloways in West Dorset, and not only are they spectacular, but they are a record of human movement going back hundreds of years. And in the case of Shutes Lane and Hell Lane, it wouldn’t surprise me that they had their origins deep in the past.

Whilst paths are nowadays seen as second or third rate in this age of the motorcar, Taplin wants to rediscover their literary heritage. She draws on the works of John Clare, William Barnes, Thomas Hardy, John Cooper Powys, Richard Jefferies and Edward Thomas and others. She is intending on trace the relationship of the literary path to the actual paths.

Both animals and man make paths. Where people have walked and not followed the neatly laid out and prescribed asphalt are called desire paths. Animals make similar routes across fields and through hedgerows, finding the most suitable routes to where they want to get to.

Paths that had been used for hundreds of years were taken from the commoners in the state-sanctioned theft of the commons by the landed gentry and the aristocracy (bastards), or as we are taught in history, the enclosure acts. Paths that anyone could and did walk along were now private property. The great and the good (such an inaccurate and misleading title) conspired to then ensure that the footpaths were blocked both legally and illegally.

The paths weren’t just a functional route for one place to another, they had a vital use for villagers to court and socialise after a days toil on the land. There were some landowners who were sympathetic to the plight of those wanting and demanding access, but a lot were concerned that they would mar it.

People have always enjoyed the right to walk through the English Countryside, and they have always done so for pleasure as well as business. In an age of greater material prosperity, our spiritual needs increase: we need the quietness and sweet variety that paths can offer.

Some paths had lots of traffic, others were scarcely used. Some Paths, as written in ‘Still Glides The Stream’ were the first stage in every journey, and others became important hubs at churches and pubs.

The distances that some folks had to walk were large; it wasn’t uncommon for people to walk six miles each way for school or to their place of employment. There was always a path that people travelled along on the final journey to the place they would be interred.

Walking out was seen as a part of courtship, and being seen together was part of a claim, a declaration of intentions. The gentry walked their private paths had the luxury of a carriage for other jaunts. Howitt says they may as well be born without legs… He felt they were missing out on ‘wild sounds and aspects of earth and heaven’.

The paths were public, so you would almost be seen by people who know you. But certain paths would allow some privacy, hence why you still find paths called Lovers Lane.

In a time without pervasive light pollution, paths could take on a more sinister feel. The echoes of folklore could be felt on a moonless night. Dark nights were perfect for those who wished to move around without the authorities’ gaze.

Walking can be a cure for the black dog, and a number of writers in this book have used it for that very purpose. Helen Thomas mentions in her autobiography (I have a copy of this that I really must read) that the act of walking, placing one foot in front of the other, is a balm for many people. This is being proved by modern science too.

Immersion in the natural world is good for our very soul. In the chapter, Sounds, Scents and Seeings, Taplin explores how her chosen writers revel in listening to the things they experience when walking. Taking the time to be in the natural world is important to all these writers.

To venture off the well-trodden path is often an act of trespass, which is ironic given that the chinless wonders had stolen it from the common people in the first place. Though they don’t seem to have a problem riding roughshod over various other landowners’ property in the pursuit of the fox.

Things changed after WW1, feudalism waned somewhat, and things changed in society, sadly, though, not always for the positive. Those in power were not particularly keen to give it up and to an extent, they still have that power. It has taken a further 100 years to get to this point, and it still isn’t over.

Is life a journey? This is the question that Taplin poses at the ned of her book and heads to the library to find references for it. I think it partly is, even though there are a vast number of curve balls that seem to have come my way on this path!

This is a lovely book about the pleasure of taking a walk along an English footpath. I liked the way that she has grouped the literary references together, and added her own take on the chosen writers’ thoughts. The way to keep these footpaths is to keep using them. It stops them from being blocked or falling into disrepair. Organisations like Slow Ways are doing a fantastic job of mapping and recording them. This is a very gentle read about the importance of keeping them alive.