Walking With Plato

May 9, 2016
After warming to “perambulatory excursions” in middle age, Hayden and his wife decide to take on the challenge of walking the entire length of Britain, from the Scottish John O’Groats to Land’s End. This detailed memoir recounts their 1,200-mile trek. Along the way, Hayden recounts his realizations about the deadening effects of modern living with help from writers such as Epicurus, Plato, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. His months-long deprivation and physical effort shape these brief philosophical reveries, which explore the power of simple pleasures. Hayden tempers these insights, admitting the difficulty of achieving happiness in small things without forced separation. The couple suffer soggy ground, sore feet, insect bites, and a constant fear of spending too much money or time on any one stop. Occasionally Hayden lapses into a dizzying litany of quaint place names and distances travelled. The work contains some truly amusing anecdotes and lovely writing, but might feel tedious and confusing to some American readers due to its long collections of British geographical references.

May 15, 2016
An English journalist's account of his three-month summer walking tour of Great Britain. For Hayden (You Kant Make It Up!: Strange Ideas from History's Great Philosophers, 2011), walking had always been "a rather dull affair." But when his wife, Wendy, proposed that they do the "End-to-End," a walkabout that extended from the northeastern tip of Scotland to the southwestern tip of England, he could not resist the physical challenge. The two set off from John o'Groats, which had won an award in 2010 as "Scotland's most dismal town." The journey got off to a difficult start, with Hayden and Wendy forced to use the tarmacked roads they had wanted to avoid. Suffering from frequent foot and body soreness, the author soon found his thoughts turning to philosophy. During the boring, rainy days on the trek to Inverness, for example, a brooding Hayden recalled Bertrand Russell's observations that "external interests are key to happiness." As the footpaths of the beautiful Scottish Highlands opened to them, the mood lightened. Hayden's thoughts turned to Epicurus, who believed that the simple things--such as biscuits and coffee after a hard day's walk--often brought the most intense pleasures. The "pitfalls and privations" of the magnificent Pennine Way followed, which led Hayden to contemplate Viktor Frankl's idea that it was struggle for a worthy cause that made life meaningful. Through wind and fog, sun and rain, the pair traveled such celebrated routes as the Heart of England and Cotswold Ways, where they encountered "woodland and pasture...ploughed fields...and ancient town[s] with enchanting Tudor cottages." Unfortunately, the author's descriptions of these and other treasures he encountered on the way are pedestrian and perfunctory. Observing Hayden relearning how to delight in "simply being" may offer satisfaction for some readers, but the overall narrative comes across as trite and unoriginal. Enthusiastic but lackluster travel writing.

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June 1, 2016
Among the thousands who have braved the thousand-mile walk from John o'Groats in northeastern Scotland to Land's End in southwestern Cornwall, none has measured his or her steps more thoughtfully than Hayden. Though only his wife, Wendy, accompanies him on his three-month hike through the countryside, readers will marvel at the range of writers who open his mind to new perspectives on that unfolding landscape. During that journey of body and intellect, the author and his readers travel from footsore reflections in the early going on how Epictetus rejoiced in bodily pleasures to later recollections while approaching Inverarnan on how Kierkegaard walked himself out of depression. Lying on his back contemplating the stars above Greenhead, Hayden remembers how Hildebrand Jacob expatiated on the sublime, and surveying the pastures near Coleshill, he savors Tennyson's lush description of rural vistas. Finally, the end of the trail occasions melancholy musings on how Basho intuited the transience of all things in a single cuckoo's cry. A compelling reminder that serious reading sustainseven transformslived experience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)