Hunter Davies: The sheer joy and freedom of walking

I was a teenager when I began walking not simply as a way to get from A to B. More specifically. I was a teenager who had just met his first serious girlfriend. I was 18 years old, Margaret was 17. We were growing up in Carlisle in the dark ages of the 1950s and entertainment was in short supply.

We had no money and nowhere to go, so walking is what we did. Most weekends we would get on the bus and stay on until it arrived at the next terminus. Then we would walk right back again.

By today’s standards I realise that doesn’t sound very exciting, but walking was the foundation of our courtship and the seven, sometimes eight hours it took to get home were about Margaret (the novelist Margaret Foster) and I being together; being alone.

Later we ventured further afield. It was the start of the youth hostelling movement and we whiled away our summers in the Lake District, Scotland and the Yorkshire Dales and while the nights were spent in separate dormitories, the days were spent walking. In truth there was no other option.

Every morning after breakfast you were turfed out, the doors of the youth hostel were bolted behind and you weren’t allowed back in until 5pm. After that there were three options. You could try to find a pub which was open, you could sit in a hedge for a day or you could go walking. We opted for the latter and I’ve been walking ever since.

I’m 81 years old now and I had a new knee fitted a few years ago, so I can’t do the big hill climbs of my youth any more, but give me flat ground and a fair wind and I can and do still walk for hours.

In many ways I am lucky. I live in Hampstead, just a Tube or bus ride away from the centre of London, but across the heath you can walk for three hours without even crossing a road. Not one. It feels like you are in the middle of the countryside.

Most days I walk for two hours, but these aren’t grand expeditions. Now the route of my daily walks fit round the local cafes. I will do some work in the morning, break off at 11am, walk for half an hour and stop for a coffee. In the afternoon I’ll walk for another hour, maybe an hour and a half. It’s part of my day, part of my routine.

Most days I set out knowing where I am going. Often it will be to the swimming baths in Kentish Town or to the coffee shop in South End Green, but with walking the reality is that you never really know where it will take you.

You might walk down the same roads, turn left at the same junction and see the same familiar landmarks, but when you are walking the world always looks a little different from the day before.

The beauty about walking is its simplicity. I can switch my computer off, get up from my desk and that’s it. Two more steps and I am out in the fresh air putting one foot in front of the other. I pity the poor joggers, who have to invest in heart rate monitors, fancy watches and lycra outfits, then what do they do? They spend an hour pounding their knees against hard concrete only to return home so sweaty they need to have a shower. I see them every day and it never looks like they are having much fun.

Cyclists are the same. There is one who lives in the house opposite. He can spend all day carefully wiping and polishing his bike and whenever I see him I can’t help wondering why?

That’s their thing of course. Jogging and cycling are obsessive, but walking is different, it’s democratic. Anyone can walk.

Just look at Alfred Wainwright. He was a fell-walker, guidebook author, illustrator and a bit of a hero of mine. I was lucky enough to meet him and after he died I had the privilege of writing his biography. What I loved about Wainwright was that he wasn’t athletic in any way, yet he spent 13 years walking, getting to know ever fell in the Lake District. He knew it better than anyone.

His walking guides quietly became bestsellers, but book sales and royalties weren’t important to him. He didn’t crave fame or adulation, he just craved the outdoors. Wainwright wasn’t a man who strode, he lumbered and I rather liked him for that. He was quite ungainly and he was often mocked for the clumsy way he got over the stiles and his general demeanour. But none of that mattered. It was the walk which was important.

Who knows what Wainwright would have made of the survey last week that claimed 41 per cent of 40 to 60 year-olds haven’t been for a brisk 10-minute walk in the last month?

I am always rather sceptical of these reports and in its wake came all sorts of ridiculous claims of the health benefits of walking for just a few minutes a day. Walking can’t prevent you getting cancer and it won’t make you immune to heart attacks or strokes but I am a great believer that it is good for the mind.

Despite the miles and the hours I have trod over the years, Margaret was always a better, stronger walker than me. She was the one who carried the rucksack, except when we went through villages. Whenever we came close to civilisation I would take it back to avoid looking like a wimp.

Margaret died 18 months ago. Forty years earlier she’d had a double mastectomy, but the cancer returned. This time it was in her spine and unfortunately there was no treatment available and nothing the doctors could do.

Walking, the thing that had sealed our courtship, became difficult, but while she was still able to, Margaret loved to be outside and would stagger around the garden of our London home until even that eventually became impossible.

After her death I had to decide what to do with our house in the Lake District. We had bought it many years earlier and had spent six months of every year there. From May to October we were Lakelanders and just as we had all those years earlier we were happy just to walk.

Eventually I decided to sell the place. It was a difficult decision and I miss the house terribly, but I still go up to the Lakes once a month to revisit those places we came to know so well. And when I walk I always take a pen with me. I like to know that it’s there just in case I have any ideas I want to note down, but sometimes I think about nothing at all.

Walking has many benefits, but it also satisfies my liking for frugality. You don’t have to buy a ticket to walk, you don’t have to pay for the privilege and that absolute freedom without having to pay a penny may just be the best thing of all.

Hunter Davies is the author of three walking guides. His latest book, A Day in the Life: Memories of Sixties London, Lots of Writing, The Beatles and My Beloved Wife, is published by Simon and Schuster priced £16.99.