Wednesday Wanders - Mark Bowden

Wednesday Wanders is a book about walking; not a guidebook with detailed route descriptions and maps, but the journal of a walker looking to broaden his horizons by seeing what could be achieved with an early start and still be home for tea (or supper more often). Weekly adventures setting out from northwest London to explore some of the long-distance footpaths of southeast England.

Written in a light-hearted, humorous, but sometimes thoughtful style, it's a journal of determination and achievement sitting alongside not a little folly, with some inept navigation and unrealistic plans. More importantly, it's about what happened along the way, the fascination of places visited, the people met, the animals encountered, and perhaps most significantly, discovering the unexpected beauty and varied countryside in this corner of the country.

Each chapter covers one of the seven routes attempted. Starting with the London LOOP, although this was the last walk completed. Chapter two returns to the beginning with a naïve walker setting out on the first stage of the North Downs Way from Farnham to Guildford on a wet and travel-disrupted day in early November. That chapter finishes five months later, on a bright but windy spring day, along the cliff tops into Dover. Proving that you can indeed complete a long-distance path in day trips.

Five more routes are covered: the Ridgeway, Icknield Way Path, the Chiltern Way, Greensand Way, and the Hertfordshire Way. Some walks were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic or the onset of winter when the days were too short to complete their further reaches, but all were eventually finished. A thousand miles of walking recalled in a diary entry format. Each outing is dated, and the location and mileage given.