Walking the Old Way between chalk and sea with Gail Simmons

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Event details

Meet the authors who are writing about walking and the landscapes through which we walk, at walk · listen · create’s Walking Writers Salons. We are delighted to have author Gail Simmons join us in July, to talk about walking through history, landscape and solitariness. Gail’s “Between the Chalk and the Sea” as been receiving rave reviews since its publication Ian February this year. (Headline 2023)

Described as England’s Camino, the Old Way is a long-distance footpath that carves through one of the nation’s most iconic landscapes – one that links prehistoric earthworks, abandoned monasteries, Saxon churches, ruined castles and historic seaports.

Over four seasons, travel writer Gail Simmons walks the Old Way to rediscover what a long journey on foot offers us today. In the age of the car, what does it mean to embrace ‘slow travel’? Why does being a woman walking alone still feel like a radical act? In an age when walking connects the nation, can we now reclaim pilgrimage as a secular act?

Winding 240 miles (386kms) between the chalk hills and shifting seascapes of the south coast, Gail ventures deep into our past, exploring this lost path; the pilgrims who have walked it before her, its ancient folklore and modern politics, blending history, anthropology, etymology and geology.

RAYNOR WINN: ‘I loved this memoir – centuries of stories captured in the chalk, all told through the prism of one life.’

Walking Writers Salons are hour-long events in which you will get to meet a Walking Writer and learn from them how they weave writing and walking, and how they interpret their surroundings. Each Salon will include a discussion with the author led by Andrew Stuck, inviting questions from the audience, and will include a multiple choice quiz in which winners will receive prizes including print copies of WALKING (RRP €4.50) and WALKING HOME (RRP €4.99) our own limited edition illustrated chapbook anthologies of poems and prose.

STOP PRESS: Headline books have offered us two e-book editions of “Between the Chalk and the Sea” as quiz prizes!