It’s some time since I reviewed Ruth Livingstone’s excellent Soggy Socks, a shorter handbook and memoir of her fascinating and laudable endeavour of walking the entire coastline of this island; so, apologies for my tardiness in getting around to reading her longer work on the same subject – on which she has now published several tomes – and I can only add, in my defence, that my flat is a dusty sanctuary for at least a thousand unread works, arranged in no particular order on various shelves and in different book cases, and that it somehow got lost at the bottom of a to-read pile, behind several other stacks, and that, searching for something else, I was delighted to rediscover it, having thought it forever lost, forever gone. That said, let’s get on with the show.
Although I have little experience of long distance walking, and that which I do have – sections of the Camino de Santiago medieval pilgrimage route in Northern Spain, featured in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, as well as part of a walking route around the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile in the freezing rain, and an impulsive twelve mile hike up and down the Regent’s Canal, between Hackney and Limehouse in the blistering summer heat (I did this in order to avoid an England v Germany football tie, but ended up passing an apartment block near the Stratford part of the canal, with young me out on a balcony cheering – a good sign, I thought, until I realised that they all had Scottish accents) – took place up to twenty years ago, when I was much younger and fitter (sage advice on romanticising our individual hiking capacities, based on nostalgia and wishful thinking, is addressed succinctly in Walking the English Coast). Nevertheless, I found this to be both an engaging and a compelling read, and one I wouldn’t have wanted to have missed. It’s not just for those who wish to undertake traversing the whole of our coastline on foot, although it is, first and foremost, a manual for doing just that: there are highlighted TOP TIPS on almost every other page, as well as every kind of information you might need, such as invaluable advice on crossing waterways, as well as for traversing electric fences, and other inevitable obstacles. Just reading it made my legs ache, but in a good, satisfying way.
Beautifully written, informative and conversationally engaging, Walking the English Coast is the perfect springboard for stepping outside your front door and putting one foot in front of the other, until you eventually come full circle; and if that were all that it was, doing exactly what it says on the tin, it would be more than good enough, and a fascinating read; but there’s so much more going on here, that makes it an exquisite companion for preparing for your journey, epic or otherwise, and for carrying with you as you go; there are copious nature notes, as well as compelling references to the history of these lands, something that I find as captivating and engrossing as the idea of setting out one day a la Laurie Lee (In his 1930s classic work As I Walked One Midsummer Morning, where he diarises his beginning a walk in rural Gloucestershire and somehow ending up in the midst of the Spanish Civil War), and not returning for some time. Early on, Livingstone beguiles us with details of the ever-changing nature of our coastline:
“In Norfolk, the doomed village of Happisburgh is slowly slipping into the sea. When I walked along its beach in 2010, I saw lines of rusting metal supports standing like rows of decaying teeth. The wooden barriers they once held had completely disappeared. In a further desperate attempt to stop erosion, a mass of boulders [were] piled up under the crumbling cliffs. But the waves continue in their relentless assault and, since I walked that section of the coast, more Happisburgh residents have seen their houses slide away… in Suffolk, I’ve seen houses standing on the edge of the cliff with their back walls tumbled onto the beach below… our shoreline is fragile and constantly changing. In fact, the whole coastline is dotted with the history of our human development: from ancient castles to modern military fortifications, from tiny fishing villages… to commercial ports with deep-sea harbours and ranks of automated cranes.”
She can also be refreshingly frank on the challenges the novice long distance walker might face, in seeking shelter and other sustenance, at the end of a long day’s pounding the shoreline and the inland hills:
“I have visited an amazing array of local cafés, tea shops, chippies, and wonderful pubs… of course, I’ve also visited places that were cold and uncomfortable, serving overpriced and tasteless food, with weird opening hours and unfriendly staff.”
Moving onto the fundamental practicalities, Livingstone is excellent on selecting the right footwear and clothing, and on dealing with blisters, without which you might find yourself out in the cold and unable to walk more than another step. The extensive advice and information provided within the pages of Walking the English Coast is really second to none, from plotting your route and building up your base fitness, to understanding Public Rights of Way, and just about everything in between, including the answer to the eternal question, does the Queen own the beach?
In short, Walking the English Coast is, if not the definitive work on any reader’s potential trek into the not-quite-unknown, then up there with the very best. Ruth Livingstone is a staggeringly brilliant writer whose prose is dripping with poignant beauty. Five stars.
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Ted Curtis
“And sometimes, in really isolated areas, I find myself talking to the sheep.”
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 6, 2021
Ted Curtis
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 6, 2021
Although I have little experience of long distance walking, and that which I do have – sections of the Camino de Santiago medieval pilgrimage route in Northern Spain, featured in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, as well as part of a walking route around the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile in the freezing rain, and an impulsive twelve mile hike up and down the Regent’s Canal, between Hackney and Limehouse in the blistering summer heat (I did this in order to avoid an England v Germany football tie, but ended up passing an apartment block near the Stratford part of the canal, with young me out on a balcony cheering – a good sign, I thought, until I realised that they all had Scottish accents) – took place up to twenty years ago, when I was much younger and fitter (sage advice on romanticising our individual hiking capacities, based on nostalgia and wishful thinking, is addressed succinctly in Walking the English Coast). Nevertheless, I found this to be both an engaging and a compelling read, and one I wouldn’t have wanted to have missed. It’s not just for those who wish to undertake traversing the whole of our coastline on foot, although it is, first and foremost, a manual for doing just that: there are highlighted TOP TIPS on almost every other page, as well as every kind of information you might need, such as invaluable advice on crossing waterways, as well as for traversing electric fences, and other inevitable obstacles. Just reading it made my legs ache, but in a good, satisfying way.
Beautifully written, informative and conversationally engaging, Walking the English Coast is the perfect springboard for stepping outside your front door and putting one foot in front of the other, until you eventually come full circle; and if that were all that it was, doing exactly what it says on the tin, it would be more than good enough, and a fascinating read; but there’s so much more going on here, that makes it an exquisite companion for preparing for your journey, epic or otherwise, and for carrying with you as you go; there are copious nature notes, as well as compelling references to the history of these lands, something that I find as captivating and engrossing as the idea of setting out one day a la Laurie Lee (In his 1930s classic work As I Walked One Midsummer Morning, where he diarises his beginning a walk in rural Gloucestershire and somehow ending up in the midst of the Spanish Civil War), and not returning for some time. Early on, Livingstone beguiles us with details of the ever-changing nature of our coastline:
“In Norfolk, the doomed village of Happisburgh is slowly slipping into the sea. When I walked along its beach in 2010, I saw lines of rusting metal supports standing like rows of decaying teeth. The wooden barriers they once held had completely disappeared. In a further desperate attempt to stop erosion, a mass of boulders [were] piled up under the crumbling cliffs. But the waves continue in their relentless assault and, since I walked that section of the coast, more Happisburgh residents have seen their houses slide away… in Suffolk, I’ve seen houses standing on the edge of the cliff with their back walls tumbled onto the beach below… our shoreline is fragile and constantly changing. In fact, the whole coastline is dotted with the history of our human development: from ancient castles to modern military fortifications, from tiny fishing villages… to commercial ports with deep-sea harbours and ranks of automated cranes.”
She can also be refreshingly frank on the challenges the novice long distance walker might face, in seeking shelter and other sustenance, at the end of a long day’s pounding the shoreline and the inland hills:
“I have visited an amazing array of local cafés, tea shops, chippies, and wonderful pubs… of course, I’ve also visited places that were cold and uncomfortable, serving overpriced and tasteless food, with weird opening hours and unfriendly staff.”
Moving onto the fundamental practicalities, Livingstone is excellent on selecting the right footwear and clothing, and on dealing with blisters, without which you might find yourself out in the cold and unable to walk more than another step. The extensive advice and information provided within the pages of Walking the English Coast is really second to none, from plotting your route and building up your base fitness, to understanding Public Rights of Way, and just about everything in between, including the answer to the eternal question, does the Queen own the beach?
In short, Walking the English Coast is, if not the definitive work on any reader’s potential trek into the not-quite-unknown, then up there with the very best. Ruth Livingstone is a staggeringly brilliant writer whose prose is dripping with poignant beauty. Five stars.
Images in this review
Sally Milnes
Inspiration for all of us who are a little afraid to begin.....
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2017
Diddy
happy and healthy along the way
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2016Amazon Customer
Keep on walking Ruth!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 27, 2016Charlotte
... book from the comfort of my sofa and thoroughly enjoyed it - I laughed outloud alot
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 10, 2016