The top 10 walks in books

From Laurie Lee's departure for Spain one sunny morning to Flora's unfortunate sexual odyssey in Cold Comfort Farm, Duncan Minshull chooses the best literary journeys on foot

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• Duncan Minshull
• theguardian.com, Thursday 25 September 2014 03.30 EDT
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Stroll on … the Bennets take the country air in the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex

I've always been a walker. Age 10, it was the Sunday outing (family bonding); age 13, it was getting away from home (rebellion); and, as a student of 20, I tramped everywhere (no money).

Later I began examining the activity, which meant writing about it, and after that I corralled 200 walkers and their journeys into an anthology, just re-published as While Wandering. This contains characters from fiction, as well as passages from memoirs, plays and poetry. The purpose of the book was to shed some light on our desire to travel by foot.

John Hillaby said he had no idea why he walked, despite crossing deserts, roaming the length of Britain, and writing great books about it all. Funny, I've always believed the opposite. There are a thousand and one reasons for setting out, be they physical, psychological or spiritual, rational or bonkers. I like to think that the following people might inspire us to hit the road, too.

1. A Letter to Henrietta Lund from Søren Kierkegaard

Numerous philosophers have walked and wondered. Kierkegaard did so in countryside near Copenhagen, and suggested that it might be good for his niece, Jette, to do likewise. Prompting her in 1847, he came up with a notion I repeat on my own travels: "I walk myself into a state of wellbeing, and walk away from every illness." (I don't care if people look at me oddly either.)

2. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee

Lee's memoir about travelling through Spain towards the Spanish civil war is an enduring favourite. I love the beginning as he waves goodbye to his mother on a Sunday morning in Gloucestershire, heading for London. There is early sunshine and youthful optimism, tinged with trepidation. Plus a chunk of cheese and some treacle biscuits in the bag. What a way to go!

3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Austen sent her fictional characters across fields and down lanes. In her most famous novel, she dispatches Elizabeth Bennet outdoors to show how she's different from other young women of her class and, crucially, that she can act for herself. Elizabeth gets muddy, her cheeks "glow", and all this happens away from arid society drawing rooms. Out and about she'll also meet Mr Darcy. Enough said.

4. The Shoe Breaker by Daniel Boulanger

In this short story, Pinceloup has a specialist's job. He's paid to wear in the new shoes of the nobility and does so by clomping around the streets of 18th-century Paris. He has softened more than 12,000 pairs, roughly one pair per morning. But now he's up against it with some dress shoes purchased and passed to him by the Baron Petit-Chablis. They are extra rigid, they require extra miles, and Pinceloup is already exhausted. The reader can't help but feel sorry for this urban stroller.

5. On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin

This isn't a novel about walking, but there is a network of walks running through it, taking in the gorgeous, lush, rolling landscape of the Shropshire-Powys borders. One character, out with his girl, realises his luck is in and destiny beckons when behind him "she planted her footsteps in his".

6. Of Walking in Ice by Werner Herzog

Herzog the film-maker was friends with Bruce Chatwin. They even talked about walking together. Before that, in 1974, another of Herzog's friends was ailing in Paris, so during a freezing November he set off from Munich to arrive at her bedside. He believed this solitary hike would "will" her back to good health. But did it work? The diary of his journey is as otherworldly as his renowned films.

7. Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer

While incarcerated, Hitler's architect described how he succeeded in walking around much of the world, from Europe to Asia, though not by way of China. China, a communist state, had to be avoided. How did he do this? Well, he left his cell for a small prison garden and imagined that every step he took there stood for so many hundreds of miles. It was an exercise of will and an antidote against "endless boredom". You could say that writing about it made Speer an early psychogeographer.

8. The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

Go for a walk and take his most recent book with you. Macfarlane captures the age-old rituals of a simple activity, and effortlessly evokes the landscapes he moves through in England, Europe and the Middle East. He is clear-sighted and, like Herzog, open to those strangenesses encountered on the road ahead.

9. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Collecting material for While Wandering, I found that the early 20th century was a heyday for rambling in Britain – which also meant lots of knickerbockered bores going on about the miles covered and equipment used. In Gibbons' satire, one of these types, Mr Mybug, rambles with Flora the heroine. But his points of reference are all sexual, with phallic symbols looming everywhere: buds are nipples, hills are breasts, hollows are navels … Yes, that'll do. And it's enough for Flora as well, who later vows to walk in solitude. Sometimes the world of walking is easy to spoof.

10. Modern Utopia by HG Wells

I started this list with a mantra, and will end with one. I haven't read many of his novels, but there's a line from one of the non-fiction works that I'll happily take to my deathbed: "There will be many footpaths in Utopia."

• Duncan Minshull is the editor of While Wandering, published by Vintage.

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