Review by The Rev Ian Dewar
What really is there to say about walking? It’s just putting one foot in front of the other – right? Well, Annabel Streets explores walking in all its variety, helping us to mix up our walking and gain, or at least learn, some health benefits on the way.
Before I start, I have to admit, I did not follow the instructions for this book. As you can probably tell from the name, “52 ways to walk” is meant to be read one chapter a week for the 52 weeks of a year. Instead, I turned page after page as I journeyed up and down England by train.
And the verdict – there are more ways than you can imagine to mix up walking to keep it interesting and fresh.
Annabel Streets guides us through a vast range of literature, studies, and ideas that show us why walking is so beneficial to our health. Whether it’s that walking in the sunshine can improve our immune system, or smiling at others to lifts our mood, walking can have a whole range of health benefits.
This book is both for the science nerd and the outdoor rambler. Written in a very accessible way, Annabel Streets brings together complicated scientific concepts with easy tips and enjoyable anecdotes.
If I’m being critical, some of the ways to walk did feel to contradict each other - walk alone, walk with other, or walk in the rain, walk in sunshine, or walk with a map, walk to get lost. But the book does acknowledge that, and I think we can take it as an encouragement – walking really does have lots of health benefits and we might not be doing it all wrong.
This is a book to savor, to take slowly, to let your creativity expand as you plan your next walking adventure. Whether it is a speedy lap round the block in your lunch break, or a barefoot muddy walk to get your senses tingling – Annabel Streets has some ideas to help you see walking in an even broader sense than you already do.
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