The decision to look at the literary history came from a sense, gained from the books that I was reading, that walking had acquired its cultural significance because of its relationship with writing, especially the Romantic-era writers. And, in part, those writers had acquired kudos because they were powerful walkers. I felt that if I was to disrupt that narrative, which I was increasingly sure was totally wrong, I needed to demonstrate that walking was significant for women writers, too. Offering a beguiling, alternative view of the history of walking, Wanderersguides us through the different ways of seeing ‐ of being‐ articulated by these ten pathfinding women.

Ellen Weeton - An ambitious walker of the early 1800s, who recounts a solo ascent of Snowdon, among other adventures, in letters and journals only published long after her death. When her brother William married and fathered five children, Dorothy, who lived with them, was forced to take on more domestic duties and childcare, but still tried her best to walk, even with her nieces and nephews in tow. But for a woman “capable of walking alone 40 miles a day, this must have felt inhibiting indeed, but the biggest trial was the curtailment of her walks with William”(78). Most women, myself included, do not walk alone after dark if we can avoid it. No matter how unfair this is and how angry it makes many of us, we calculate it’s not worth the risk. But Woolf didn’t always heed these warnings, as she recorded that she “rambled down to Charing Cross in the dark, making up phrases & incidents to write about. Which is, I expect, the way one gets killed”(162).Kathleen Jamie states in the Foreword of the book, “to walk is to notice,”(9) and Dorothy’s noticing and recording what she observed and experienced was material for brother William’s poetry as well as his A Guide Through the District of Lakes in the North of England, and later Harriet Martineau’s edition of such a guide too. (Martineau is also included in Wanderers.) I’m trudging through a Saharan sandstorm. The wind is so loud I can’t hear Brahim, my guide, who is beside me at the head of our camels. Snot is coursing down my face and bubbling into my mouth under my chech (scarf), which is wound round my forehead and my chin to stop my skin being taken off by the sand. I have ski goggles to protect my eyes. It is so hot, I want to rip my ears off. Ears which are filled with grit and itching horribly from the inside. I am silently cursing Freya Stark, the British explorer born in the Victorian era, who journeyed all over the Middle East and is one of the reasons I am in this hell. I didn’t know when I started in January 2019 that I would be walking through the Covid pandemic In Wanderers, Andrews has taken ten women as her focus, all of whom have lived within the last 300 years, and who have all ‘found walking essential to their sense of themselves, as people and as writers.’ The blurb declares that Wanderers ‘guides us through the different ways of seeing – of being’. Author Rachel Hewitt wrote in her review of this book: ‘Andrews unearths the forgotten women who have walked for creativity, for independence and self-discovery, to remember, to forget, to escape violence, to aid physical and emotional strength.’ From Ellen Weeton confounding local (male) Victorian assumptions with a solo ascent of Snowdon, and a solitary Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt ranging on foot across 19th Century Scotland, to the more contemporary account of Cheryl Strayed remaking herself through suffering on the Pacific Crest Trail, many of the women in the book walk alone. But for the solo female walker it's often assumed there'll be an undercurrent of anxiety, a fear of assault that a lone male might never consider - and some of these writers do voice such concerns. From both what you've read, and what you've experienced as a woman walker yourself, does a sense of vulnerability ever influence women's attitudes to walking alone? Might this still deter people?

I opened this book and instantly found that I was part of a conversation I didn't want to leave. A dazzling, inspirational history.”—Helen Mort, author of No Map Could Show Them I walk to propel my body, generate ideas, process information and experiences, understand the world and people, and to move in closer to myself. Dazu muss allerdings auch erwähnt werden, dass ich aufgrund von der befristeten Leihfrist dazu gezwungen war schneller zu lesen, als mir lieber gewesen wäre. Ich kann mir sehr gut vorstellen, dass ich mit mehr Zeit einfach nur längere Pausen zwischen den Kapiteln eingelegt hätte um dieses Buch langsamer genießen und verdauen zu können. I have chosen two walker-writers from the book to touch upon: Dorothy Wordsworth and Virginia Woolf. Dorothy Wordsworth and her brother, poet William Wordsworth, along with other siblings, were orphaned in 1783 when Dorothy was 12 and William 13, and were subsequently separated. In 1799, well into their twenties, Dorothy and William reunited and walked 70 miles “home,” to the Lake District in England where they were born. They arrived together and happy at their new home, Dove Cottage in Grasmere.Nan’s mountain world taught me the importance of connecting with my surroundings, to take time away from technology and to sometimes just be, because according to Nan, “to know Being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountain”.

Why has it persisted into our own century, and what steps do you think we can take – and I very much include the outdoor media here – to work towards a more levelled-up representation?Dorothy cherished her walks with William, the way this joint practice restored their relationship and developed into a strong creative partnership. For me personally there were 3 particular standout chapters – those on Nan Shepherd, Cheryl Strayed and Virginia Wolf. I am a huge fan of Nan Shepherd’s work and The Living Mountain is a book which I read over and over again, for although she walked in the Cairngorms in Scotland and I walk in the Mournes in Northern Ireland, so much of what she unfolds in her short work resonates with me. She knew her mountains intimately, like friends, and it was that experience Kerri states that was ‘fundamental to her writing’. Kerri goes on to say that: ‘At the heart of Shepherd’s writing is a careful and subtle articulation of the complex interactions between physical movement, introspection and the landscape that create meaning in a human life.’ Kerri’s observations about the lives of the women in her book are equally as poised and intricate as Shepherd’s recordings of the terrain over which she wandered prolifically and with full awareness of the risks involved. Kerri explores the almost mystical aspect to Shepherd’s walking, the urges to ‘run away’ from her writing, the courageousness needed by Shepherd to accomplish the physical feats she writes of in The Living Mountain. Through Kerri’s words we are brought closer to understanding the woman behind the beautiful poetry and books that Shepherd brought to the world and that is such a precious gift. Here, among an endless ruin of shattered boulders – which to Dorothy looked like the “skeletons or bones of the earth not wanted at the creation” – lies another world. It is covered, Dorothy wrote, “with never-dying lichens, which the clouds and dews nourish”. Dorothy’s account offers a glimpse of the mountain’s never-ending life, an early example of the attentiveness to detail that characterises much of women’s more recent mountain writing, particularly Nan Shepherd’s.