Forget the Salt Path – this writer’s introspective journey provides genuine food for thought

When Jenn Ashworth set out on Alfred Wainwright’s 192-mile coast-to-coast walk, from St Bees in the west to Robin Hood’s Bay in the east, she was stepping out of character. Her daily circular walks round Lancaster during lockdown were no real preparation, and a brief orienteering course was no guarantee that she wouldn’t get lost. She wasn’t walking for charity or running away from a marriage or, like the fell runner who’d done the route in 39 hours, trying to break any record. A homebody “inclined to slowness”, she was a 40-year-old novelist, professor and mother of two going off on her own for two-and-a-half weeks for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate.

Not that there weren’t contributory factors. Lockdown had left her with post-Covid cabin fever, itchy to be elsewhere after the long months of caring for her family and students (“a one-woman battle against entropy”). She also knew that at every pub and guest house she’d booked en route supportive letters would be waiting from her terminally ill but brilliantly animated friend Clive. Most importantly, although her walking wouldn’t be solitary, since she couldn’t avoid bumping into other (potentially annoying) hikers, she’d be “the sole owner of my own skin again”.

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