Wanderers: A History of Women Walking

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Again, the ten women Andrews explores in Wanderers have their own brand of pedestrianism, and all benefit in significant ways from their practice of walking. Ellen Weeton, a governess in Ambleside, also wrote compelling accounts of her mountain climbing in her journal. Journaling was extremely popular then; unlike modern diaries, journals were written to be read by friends and family. Weeton's writing is so good it was eventually collected and published in 1969 - over a century after she died. I cross the burn, follow the lane a little south, wondering where Jessie would have found the next part of her descent. And there, between one burn and the next is a gate and a path marked by a scattered line of brown leaves, leading down between trees. It is unremarked on the map and delights me with the soft secrecy of its way. Here there is soprano birch leaf and the bronzy tenor of the first clusters of oak leaves.” In Colombo, Sri Lanka, I stayed at the Grand Oriental, the only hotel still standing that she stayed at on her whirlwind tour. When Bly was in Singapore, Orchard Road – now Asia’s most famous shopping street – was a shady lane bounded by nutmeg plantations and orchards. Bly spent Christmas Day in Canton, China (now Guangzhou) touring markets, temples and the more chilling side of the city with its execution ground, lepers’ colony and a jail as harrowing as a torture chamber. To my relief, that sinister side of Canton can no longer be traced. We both rode the historic Peak Tram in Hong Kong, and climbed inside the ancient bronze belly of the Great Buddha in Kamakura, Japan. It is so high up that you feel as if in any moment you might topple into Loch Ness below. They say the loch is bottomless and treacherous, yet, on calm days, it is, as Coleridge writes ‘a painted ocean’.

Intrepid journalist Nellie Bly circled the world faster than anyone ever had in 1890. She travelled alone, with just a Gladstone bag, and shattered the fictional 80-day record of Phileas Fogg , returning in 72 days after travelling 21,740 miles. The fearless globetrotter had achieved “the most remarkable of all feats of circumnavigation ever performed by a human being,” said the New York World, sponsor of her trip. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughness a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye’”(174).Walking and losing herself in the pulse of life provided not only material for Woolf’s stories, but the placing of one foot in front of the other established a forward trajectory, fueling the timely unfolding of her stories and revelatory musings of specific characters: As a writer, sociologist and anti-slavery campaigner Martineau was an outstanding intellect of her age, a real polymath. And no slouch when it came to feats of walking endurance over the fells, written up in an engaging style. But until reading Wanderers, I hadn't even heard of her. To what extent can we put that down to the fact that she was a Harriet, not a Harry? Why do you think women walker-writers of the first calibre have been more easily forgotten, while male contemporaries such as William Wordsworth remain household names (at least in better read households)? It was a scorching day in June when I climbed Scafell Pike for the first time. The sky was a spectacular blue, and there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other people out on the mountain paths leading to and from the great pass at Esk Hause ,which links Borrowdale, Wasdale, Langdale, and Eskdale. Many were heading, like we were, for the summit of England’s highest mountain, and the kudos of having climbed nearly a kilometre above sea level. It was exhilarating to be able even to attempt the ascent. It was only after her return home that Wordsworth realised she had accidentally climbed the biggest peak in the land

Each writer expressed different reasons for their peripatetic lifestyle which often encompassed 10 - 14 miles per day. Some of the reasons for walking included: 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. 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? As I mention above, anecdotally it's other people's concerns that are actually more of a problem, rather than women themselves being afraid. I've never felt afraid on a hill, though I remember being uneasy in urban environments. For me the issue is compass competence – while I can read a map really well somehow bearings confound me. I'd therefore not venture too far into the wilds alone, but it's not social attitudes that's the problem. For other women, it's more a fear of being talked about than any sense of transgression that proves the difficulty. And for someone like Nin, what would seem vulnerability is actually a source of profound strength – men's eyes, sexual possibility – are all sources of creative power for her. 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

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Nan Shepherd - Free spirited doyenne of the Cairngorms, and author (among other works) of The Living Mountain, a small but beautiful book that has had a profound influence on the contemporary style of nature writing. Kerri delves deep in her exploration of Woolf and this chapter is so rich in detail and thought that it is mesmerising. She puts into words the way many of us may feel about our connection with walking through her portrayal of Woolf. I rated Wanders a three because it didn't hold my attention throughout the book and felt more like an academic exercise at times. Helen and Anna discuss why humans are drawn to danger and how we can find freedom in pushing our limits, examining attitudes to women who take risks, particularly once they become mothers, and questioning who their 'body' belongs to. The event will delve into what it's like to be a woman in such a male-dominated world – and the ways in which the climbing community is trying to shift that balance.

UKHillwalking: The established canon of early walking-writing is overwhelmingly male, and yet you've cited examples in Wanderers of women who equally deserve a place alongside their better known male peers. For instance, you write of Lakeland expert Harriet Martineau: "Recognized in her own time as a walker-writer to rival the Lake poets who put the area on the literary map, it is important we recognize that the map we carry of walking's history is incomplete without her." For most people, I'd bet that history is very much incomplete. What inspired you to undertake this reclamation of the role of women in the literary history of walking? Considered “one of the most innovative writers of the 20th century,” English writer Virginia Woolf was a walker-writer extraordinaire. This is one of my favorite chapters in the book because Andrews does such a thorough job describing how the practice of walking contributed to Woolf’s creative process, as well as the fragile balance of her life. Here are a few snippets from this intriguing chapter. 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. Frauen, die wandern, sind nie allein" von Kerri Andres - ein Buch, das mich mitgenommen hat auf eine ganz besondere und intensive Reise. Man ist nicht nur unterwegs mit berühmten Denkerinnen sämtlicher Zeiten, sondern spürt gleichzeitig, was das Wandern für sie bedeutet hat und wie es sich auf ihr Leben, auf ihre Arbeit und ihre Seele ausgewirkt hat. Think of famous walkers and it’s men like Wordsworth and Keats who likely spring to mind. But that’s only half the story.’ Country Walking MagazineVirginia Woolf - Among the foremost modernist authors of the 20th Century, and for whose work - and life - walking was integral. I walked across the vast undulating plateau, past reindeer herds, to the summits of the highest peaks and to sparkling blue lochs, where, without another soul in sight, I swam naked, just like Nan. I had no place to be and no specific time to be there. I would sleep with the sunset and wake with the sunrise. With no modern equipment I became in tune with my environment. The old clothes enabled me to feel the elements and with no phone for distraction, I was present to observe the smallest details. I sat for hours, doing nothing, just learning to be. This was an interesting read about the history of women authors walking as inspiration for their work. Men have traditionally been associated with waking and writing, and the history of women walking, being welcomed into spaces by other women to hear their stories that men could not access, and sharing a different perspective and history of the world has mostly been erased or at least not talked about commonly.