WALKING for pleasure is a contradiction in terms for many.
For others, including Slow Journeys author Gillian Souter, distance walking is a joy, a carefully-planned pursuit to be savoured long after hanging up one's boots.
- Slow Journeys: The pleasures of travelling by foot, by Gillian Souter. Allen & Unwin, rrp $27.99
As Souter points out, there are already plenty of books about hiking, almost always written by men with beards.
Despite not meeting these criteria, Souter, from Hyams Beach on the NSW south coast, is well-qualifed to write an accessible guide to travelling by foot.
She has walked "a great deal" in Europe and Britain and a "fair bit" in New Zealand and Australia.
Souter is also, by her own admission, extremely opinionated.
Souter's writing speaks volumes of her extensive experience walking paths the world over.
With many guide books today based on second-hand accounts, this is refreshing.
The territory Souter covers ranges from planning a successful walk and a genuinely useful checklist of what to take, to etiquette while on one's chosen path and how to record memories of the trip afterwards.
Woven into the narrative are quotations from famous travellers, such as author Robert Louis Stevenson, which add another dimension.
Of travelling, Stevenson wrote: "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake."
Souter's book isn't likely to win many converts to walking, but if you are at all like Stevenson - or want to understand a loved one who is - then Slow Journeys will be right up your alley.
