Shortlisted for The THWAITES WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2014 - The new literary prize for Nature & Travel Writing about Britain. A uniquely charming, droll, moving, British narrative from writer and poet Simon Armitage as he recounts his 256 mile (North to South) walk along the Pennine Way. Particularly fascinating is that he took no money and either bartered his way through or survived on any money he made at poetry readings.
Sue Baker's View.......
Simon Armitage makes a good companion for this traverse of the Pennine Way (backwards). Starting on the Scottish borders he makes his way home to Yorkshire. And he must keep up; some “interweb” work beforehand had resulted in the recruitment of a small army of walking companions and people happy to provide a bed and a meal. Then there were the poetry readings booked in advance, making a framework for the walk, there was no staying in bed or missing a day without letting down his audience along the way as he came to village halls, marquees or pub. The Pennine Way is very hard work over some incredibly bleak and exposed country and by Simon Armitage’s descriptions of way markers, not a walk for the geographically challenged. But he made it and his progress from a reluctant walker to a strider of mountain and vale is perceptive, an often very funny look at everything from landscape to squashed mars bars.
In summer 2010 Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. The challenging 256-mile route is usually approached from south to north, from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border. He resolved to tackle it the other way round: through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells and into the howling wind, he would be walking home, towards the Yorkshire village where he was born.
Travelling as a 'modern troubadour' without a penny in his pocket, he stopped along the way to give poetry readings in village halls, churches, pubs and living rooms. His audiences varied from the passionate to the indifferent, and his readings were accompanied by the clacking of pool balls, the drumming of rain and the bleating of sheep.
Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire in 1963. In 1992 he was winner of one of the first Forward Prizes, and a year later was the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. He works as a freelance writer, broadcaster and playwright, and has written extensively for radio and television. Previous titles include Kid, Book of Matches, The Dead Sea Poems, CloudCuckooLand, Killing Time, The Universal Home Doctor, Homer's Odyssey and Tyrannosaurus Rexversus The Corduroy Kid. His acclaimed translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was published in 2007.
Shortlisted for The THWAITES WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2014 - The new literary prize for Nature & Travel Writing about Britain. A uniquely charming, droll, moving, British narrative from writer and poet Simon Armitage as he recounts his 256 mile (North to South) walk along the Pennine Way. Particularly fascinating is that he took no money and either bartered his way through or survived on any money he made at poetry readings.
