Mark Wallington Pennine Walkies

I was reminded of this author when Paddy Dillon made mention of him in National Trails.

As I am currently wading through some pretty large books and making slightly heavy weather of these “brain improvers” this looked to be just the ticket.

A fairly slight volume of wit.

I read it in a day.  A fairly long reading day, but the book insisted on being read like that and I was in no mood to argue.

The author is middle-aged, with a middle-aged dog and has a desire to walk the Pennine Way because he has sort of always had a hankering to do this.

The dog is having the mid-life crisis not the author you understand.  Naturally the dog’s mid-life crisis has an all too human feel about it.

The “wit” never got better than an early equipment joke.

The level of “funny” was at the trying to hard level really, there was the odd chuckle, but Mark does not have the Bill Bryson eye or writing.

The National Lottery joke wore thin fast, it was an observation very much of its time.  So did the “not walking the Pennine Way” each time he met the Liverpudlian gearheads.

My feelings for the book are coloured by the fact it holds up a mirror to myself.  His motivations are very similar, his outlook is very similar in terms of the people he meets and the places in which he strolls.  Meandering off the official way as he feels like.  He even visits a viaduct in preference for walking the Pennine Way for goodness sake.  And it is his dog having the mid-life crisis, not him.

The book is set 1995, the Pennine Way not as popular as it was.  It seems a lot of the people Mark meets are the middle-aged men variety, either doing it to see if they still could, or re-doing it to capture a glimpse of their younger selves which may still be lurking on the route.

Perhaps you get the impression I did not like it.  That is not so, I read it eagerly and enjoyed it when it did not try so hard.  I recognised more than enough of me in it to chuckle with the author and at myself.

It seems this is the less funny of a trio of dog strolling books he wrote.  I have a distant memory of reading one of them a good long while ago.

It is without hesitation that I have arranged to read the other two.

Like many of the characters in the book, I will be returning to something in my past to see if it is still as it was.  The answer will be, “no” it will be different and the better for it.

Now back to the John Muir series of books, Ian Sinclair M25 orbital and The Appalachian Trail Vol1 (it would have been quicker to walk the trail).