We do love a good book. Even though we’ve spent the last three years pretty much permanently outside, we both still love being curled up indoors reading and dreaming about adventures.

Our shared favourite type of book is where real people go on their own real journeys. Across a field, a city or a continent. Days or weeks or years. We find these books so inspiring!

So as it’s around Christmastime we thought we’d put together some book-shaped gift ideas for walkers, or for intrepids of any stripe. All of these books mill around walking/hiking, travel, mindfulness or nature, some are new, some not, and we love them. We’d love to know your thoughts too!

Gift ideas for walkers

Gift ideas for walkers
1. A Time of Gifts
Patrick Leigh Fermor

The first book in a classic travel trilogy that we’ve both picked up and read over and over again. In the 1930s a teenage Patrick Leigh Fermor decided one snowy winter to walk from Holland to Constantinople (Istanbul). Just like that. Writing this memoir decades later, he remembers his walk across a continent now long gone.
It’s beautiful, intelligent and eerie, and sets out better than we ever could why long-distance walks are so worthwhile.
Perfect for anyone: interested in history of Europe

2. Mindful Thoughts for Walkers: Footnotes on the Zen Path
Adam Ford

We picked up this little book from a shop selling fireplaces. Presumable perfect then for a fireside, it’s full of interesting thoughts, research, meditations and pretty illustrations exploring what makes walking so good for quite literally everyone on the planet.
And probably the planet itself.
Perfect for anyone: wanting to introduce a bit of mindfulness into their daily routine

3. Up: My Life’s Journey to the Top of Everest
Ben Fogle

We followed Ben’s climb on Instagram earlier this year and were on tenterhooks with every update. If any celebrity can walk up Everest though it’d probably be Ben Fogle, who’s already raced to the South Pole and rowed the Atlantic. Luke particularly likes endurance journeys so he was interested in finding out about the hows and the whys of a climb like this. Pretty awe-inspiring.
Perfect for anyone: seeking a thrill

4. ★ Luke’s choice: The Salt Path
Raynor Winn

A couple go through financial and personal disaster, finding themselves homeless practically overnight. What do they do? They decide to screw it all and walk the South West Coast path (a stunning 633 mile part of coast of the UK, which, by the way, Luke has also walked!).
Perfect for anyone: needing a reminder that life can be good again. Or who just likes Cornwall!

5. The Old Ways
Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane walks and writes around the British Isles. Now as two nomadic English people, his descriptions of the countryside made us feel absurdly emotional but it’s not just admiring meadows and villages, oh no. He delves into ancient history, folklore, and fairytale.
It feels to us very, very, British.
Perfect for: Anglophiles, and anyone with a poetic streak

6. Step by Step: My Life in Journeys
Simon Reeve

If you watch TV really at all, you’ve probably come across travel documentary maker Simon Reeve. Although not always walking, he’s a favourite of ours because he doesn’t just travel, he journeys – going from place to place often over huge distances.
This is his memoir, so a metaphorical life journey we suppose. It’s endlessly fascinating, and his travel stories are as terrific as you’d imagine!
Perfect for anyone: …who likes Simon Reeve

7. The Crossway
Guy Stagg

Last year we walked all the way from Canterbury to Rome (you can read about our journey here), and it changed our lives. This guy has gone one step further and walked to Jerusalem. The best book about pilgrim walks we’ve come across.
Perfect for anyone: interested in long distance walks

8. ★ Nell’s choice: To Shake the Sleeping Self
Jedidiah Jenkins

There’s no one quite like Jedidiah Jenkins. A Californian who cycled 10,000 miles from Oregon in the US to Patagonia, South-as-south-can-be America. But forget about the bike: his mission was to blow away the cobwebs of his life.
The book has the most beautiful maps and illustrations, drawn by the author, and Jedidiah himself is a bit of a modern-day sage.
Perfect for anyone: finding themselves in the 21st century

Have you read any of these books? Do you have any more to add to gift ideas for walkers? Let us know!

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Gift ideas for walkers