Emma recommends... The Parallel Path: Love, Grit, and Walking the North - Jenn Ashworth

Emma says... The magic in this memoir of walking the Coast to Coast is not that Jenn's walk is a grand gesture or for a greater purpose, or that her writing of the walk eulogizes nature, or that the whole thing leads to some epic transformation. Instead, this book is magical in its refreshing realism and honesty, as well as the fact that Jenn's own inability to articulate quite why she wants to do the walk opens up space for her to engage with deep but wide-ranging reflection, memory, and awareness of the frailty of the body. Wandering through themes of care, family, writing, Northerness, friendship, illness, grief, climate change, knitting and much more, this book is a real treat or a read. Who needs The Salt Path?!?

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Burnt out and longing for an escape, Jenn Ashworth emerged from lockdown with a compulsive need to walk - and to walk away. Armed with little more than the knowledge imparted by a two-day orienteering course and a set of maps, she embarked on the most epic of English walks: Wainwright's Coast to Coast. Guided not just by Wainwright's writing but also by daily letters from her friend Clive - facing an epic journey of his own - Jenn's pilgrimage soon becomes more than just walking: a chance to reconnect and excavate, to re-engage with the act of caring for others and for oneself.

But the walk's tricky terrain is not the only thing standing in Jenn's way. As days go by, her balance begins to fail her and the act of putting one foot in front the other becomes a new exercise in caution. When a vicious heatwave forces her to pause her expedition and gives her an opportunity to investigate the new limitations of her body, Jenn is confronted with a life-altering diagnosis - and a new path of self-discovery.