This is a book that gets to the very essence of what it is to travel: to move from one place to another and arrive changed in some way. Through ten brief biographies of women from the 1800s to the present day, Andrews has taken travel in its most basic form – the simple act of stepping one foot in front of the other – and exposed the emotions that underpin what so many of us who are afflicted by wanderlust look to understand. What it is to seek out adventure. What compels us to explore. The connections we feel to certain places. How these experiences change us. And, ultimately, why some of us simply cannot stop.

Each of the stories seem to highlight the ways in which – for these women but also for every person who sets out to travel – the journey brings with it a sense of freedom that allows the explorer to experience something that would otherwise remain unknown. Through the descriptions of the terrains that these women cover, Andrews helps to convey how they experience a sense of ‘running wild’. Whether in the “elements, the whistling winds, and rolling tide” that Elizabeth Carter describes or the “danger” of the “traffic-filled streets of London” that Virginia Woolf explores, this freedom, challenge and excitement are explicitly linked to the creative process.

Each of the writers featured appears to experience something when they walk that transforms them and this plays such an enormous role in their writing and, therefore, we, as readers, must understand that their art could not exist without the journeys each has embarked upon. For Cheryl Strayed it was what was needed to even begin. Andrews’ analysis of the ways the works produced by each of the women in response to their walking is reflected in their use of language and the structure their writing takes. It demonstrates her expert appreciation of how and why this is the case and offers the reader an insight into the triumph of these literary works.

And yet, whilst this sensation of freedom and adventure into the unknown is experienced by the women profiled as they walk, the book highlights the manner in which the act of walking itself also appears to fix their identities in a more solid manner. Andrews considers the ways that walking helps the women engage with their memories and imagination, support their physical and mental health and become people with an understanding of the essence of their true selves. Andrews’ decision to include details of these women’s lives once they are no longer able to walk seems to further reinforce this, as does the fact that many of the women eventually find themselves gaining real satisfaction from retracing favoured and familiar routes and how this ‘brings into being a connection between past and present selves, and between these selves and the future’. The poignancy of memories triggered by walking (anyone who has gone for a walk in a neighbourhood they grew up in will be able to relate to this) finds a voice in Linda Cracknell as she “returns to the village thirty years after her first visit ‘with soft tread’, eager to avoid destroying earlier memories in the process of creating new ones”.

Although the book focuses on the women themselves rather than the locations in which they walk, Andrews effectively constructs, both through her descriptions and the inclusion of the descriptions produced by her featured women, an image of the landscapes traversed that is simultaneously graphic and demanding yet also rewarding and appealing. Andrews describes the way that Ellen Weeton is required to ‘scramble’ on her ‘elbows, knees, shoulders and even backside’ as she descends the mountainside to highlight the challenge that the environment presents whilst also reflecting on the joyful pleasure that Weeton experiences as a result of these physical demands and intimacy.

Dorothy Wordsworth’s journey to her birthplace in the Lake District and her retracing of the mountains she in turn becomes familiar with, serves to highlight the pull of a location and how we as individuals can feel inexplicably linked to a place. In the same way, the discussion of the contrasts between Woolf’s expeditions in London where her “walks became the raw materials for the development of her distinctive novelistic style” and Sussex demonstrates how certain locations influence us in different ways.

The profiles are also written in a manner that highlights the connections these women feel to those who have gone before them and how the permanence of the topography connects them across time with Andrews moving effortlessly between her commentary and the words of each woman. Whilst there are details of the companionships some of the women have experienced as part of their walks – Dorothy Wordsworth with her brother, Anais Nin with her lovers – Andrews identifies that, for many, they already implicitly understand the companionship they have with the others. As a walker herself, Andrews clearly views herself as a part of this and the inclusion of her own journeys as reflections within each chapter further reinforces it.

Andrews’ focus on Martineau’s discovery of “remote lands” (England actually) feels a somewhat wasted opportunity. Martineau was an accomplished and passionate woman with a strong sense of morality and compassion, ahead of her time (She would go on to author Society In America and How To Observe Morals And Manners). A more interesting inclusion would have been Martineau’s experiences walking in an America – a land questioning its history and economic foundations through the abolitionist movement, and hurtling towards the Civil War. To focus on Martineau’s English walks shows that Andrews, perhaps, wasn’t keen to tackle weightier issues.

The anthology finds a welcome depth and change of styles, not to mention a sombre reminder of the awe inspiring yet fatal power of the elements. Nan Sheppard, a long-time resident of Aberdeen (and very familiar with the local Cairngorms) reminds us that the elements, specifically the range, shouldn’t be challenged, especially if you’re little. Here she poses the suggestion that Mother Nature is sometimes far from maternal as she details how  “a group of school children, belated, fail to find the hut where they should have spent the night…in spite of the heroic efforts of their instructress, only she and one boy are alive.” Sheppard’s description of the mountains is muscular, a style that contrasts interestingly with Anais Nin’s unabashed sensuality through her discussion of how “every sense is engaged here, though smell and touch are particularly important-Paris becomes plum-like, ripe, dripping and juicy”.

Andrews’ admiration for the women she has chosen for her subjects is highly evident. She admires them as both writers and walkers and this admiration often manifests itself in similar ways. She admires their bravery. She admires their determination. She admires their passion. By featuring the details of the number of miles traversed each day by Stoddart Hazlitt, or how walking played such an important role in Harriett Martineau’s recovery from illness, we see the ways Andrews respects the physical challenges the women have undertaken whilst her reflections on Nin’s ability to bring worlds into existence through the merging of the physical and imagination indicates her respect for their skill as creatives. This admiration is so powerful that, as a reader, you cannot help to feel it too. Her proclamation that ‘We were streetwalkers and these were our streets to walk.’ appears to show how she understands the bravery these women have exercised through both their walking and in the telling of their stories and feels that it is almost our responsibility to continue with their traditions.

The featured writers are themselves contrasting: Carter comes across as a solipsist (not once do her extracts mention the people she came across during her exploration of the Kent countryside). On the other hand, Dorothy Wordsworth feels a deep sense of loss during and as a result of her walks (“On this walk, in this place, Dorothy is able to access all the layers of sensation and memory that have accumulated, enabling, eventually, a restorative, imaginative connection with the brother who will never return”) and shows an inquisitiveness, capacity for empathy and desire for connection.

These being 18^th and 19^th century writers, a certain degree of prudishness is inevitable: none of the writers discuss the endorphin rush that hits the body after physical exertion and, indeed, the aphrodisiacal effects of a good work-out. Although, if we’re reading between the lines, perhaps Weeton’s healthy appetite for food could be a metaphor for an appreciation of the sensual, the sumptuous spread a prologue to postprandial uninhibitedness.  Her description of how “after labouring up the steep for an hour or two…we all sat down upon the ground, and enjoyed a hearty meal of veal, ham, chicken, gooseberry pies, bread, cheese, butter…mutton, wine, porter, rum, brandy and bitters” can clearly be seen as emphasising her enjoyment of this. Could there be a more subliminally erotic image than a flushed woman gorging on rich viands?

The act of walking is what has been chosen to connect these women across time, but whilst the book also connects them as writers, the connection between them exists, primarily, through their experiences as women. Although the women each relate to the feminine roles ascribed by their societies in distinctly different ways, these expectations do appear to hang heavy in their minds and, in equally distinct and different ways, their walking forms a response to this. Whether Anais Nin’s exploration of her sexuality through her expeditions throughout the various cities she called home or Sarah Stoddard Hazlitt’s journey to Edinburgh to be dissolved of her marriage to her unfaithful husband, the societal expectations placed upon women appear to fuel their need to journey in this way. Sadly, for each of the women their vulnerability as a woman and the potential threat that they face (whether physically or to their reputations) by walking is an ever present factor. Nin’s observations of “Men waiting. Men’s eyes. Men following.” throughout the city echo the concerns of Elizabeth Carter who felt that “villains lurking about the woods” made it unsafe for her to walk alone and whilst Strayed’s depiction of being at the receiving end of unwanted attention is a tense and pulse-quickening read, regretfully, these experiences may resonate all too well with any woman reading who has ever walked home alone. However, what is most encouraging is that this does not appear to impede their actions. And, when discussing Elizabeth Carter, it is identified that the concerns for her safety are born more from the fact that ‘the status she was conscious of as a walker was her class; her gender was, largely, incidental.’ Andrews takes the opportunity to highlight how any fear felt regarding safety is overcome throughout her writing, presenting a series of seemingly small acts of defiance against the expected roles dominant within the societies each of these women has found themselves born into.

Unfortunately, the chapter on Nin soon becomes an anecdotal hagiography rather than offering any trenchant insight (there’s nothing on New York’s various neighbourhoods. Surely Nin, after having spent so much time walking in New York, must have recorded her observations about the city, its inhabitants and characteristics in her diaries? And, similarly, there’s just a sprinkling of information on her time spent in Paris) Again, it appears that Andrews has missed an opportunity to provide a fresh look into the lives of these familiar writers, instead focusing on the aspects of Nin’s life that a reader is likely to be already well versed in.

And yet, from the anti-climax of Nin we go to the endearing attempts by Cheryl Strayed (could there be a more appropriate surname for someone about to walk the Pacific Crest Trail?) to attempt the trek of a life-time. Strayed’s writing is heart-felt and at times visceral; she doesn’t shy away from describing the brutal effects on her body, including the way that as a female walker consideration of your menstrual cycle also becomes a vital factor as she describes how

she “did not so much look like a woman who had spent the past three weeks backpacking…as I did a woman who had been the victim of a violent…crime”. Here the more permissive and liberated nature of her inclusions as well as the contemporary style and tone become a welcome break from the earlier stifling style of the 18^th and 19^th century writers.

It feels important to note that, although the shared experiences of being a woman do run through the text, the book does not reflect the experiences of all women walkers. Each of these women profiled do carry with them a certain degree of privilege based upon their class and race and Andrews appreciates that walking as a pleasurable and enjoyable activity is something that belongs to those with ‘the means (time, money leisure)’ when she draws the comparison between Dorothy Wordsworth and the ‘anonymous woman, burdened by her domestic functions’. Andrews also highlights here that those with ‘the means’ to walk are also those whose stories we are able to recall and retell in a way that appears to acknowledge the stories that we might consider to be absent from the book.

The accounts of the women might span centuries but the women are more or less the same: white and from different strata of the bourgeoisie. There’s no mention of women of developing nations who walk (and for whom being able to walk to work or to find resources for their families is a matter of life or death), let alone extracts about walking from these women who have documented their experiences or continue to write today. Was Andrews too lazy or too “Caucasian-centric” too include extracts from works by women from the Third World? Or did she simply feel the personal pull of the experiences of walkers whose lives are most similar to her own? Either way, this lack of colour gives the book a “vanilla” hue; a book written by a white middle class woman for other white middle class women.  In this way, the book continues to support the obsession (at least in the early chapters) with the Brontë-Elliott-Austen cannon as representations of what it means to be a female writer rather than provide an introduction to any ‘new’ female writers of note. Indeed, the extracts from Carter (1717-1806) Wordsworth (1771-1855), Hazlitt (1774-1843) and Weeton (1777-1850) occasionally read as if they might be interchangeable and simply texts of their time rather than personal anecdotes accounts of the lives of three distinct women.

Although this book does not evoke the sensory experiences of a single place that is often the appeal to those of us who enjoy reading about the travels of others, it does provide a similar desire to act in response to the travels of others. The way in which Andrews presents the sensations of embarking upon a journey – both through her own analysis and the inclusion of extracts written by her subjects themselves – elicits a feeling of excitement in the reader that encourages them to join these women in this most instinctive of activities.

At a time in history when the opportunities we have to travel have been restricted, this book is the perfect reminder that even the greatest adventures begin with a single step…