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Have you been inspired by a piece of travel writing to try a similar endeavour of your own, but
found circumstance or lack of courage has knocked you off your stride? Not so Nick Hunt, who as a teenager, read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of a walk across Europe. 
Nick has followed in Fermor’s footsteps, walking from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, recounting his seven month journey in a book entitled ‘Walking the Woods and the Water’. What pace do you set yourself? How do you keep yourself going? Who do you have as your companions? What do you learn about yourself and about walking? As I try to keep up with Nick on a walk along the popular canal towpath from Broadway Market to Islington, I ask him these questions and more. 29’27″14.5MB
Download notes from the interview with Nick_Hunt
Want to hear more from Nick Hunt? Try his audio field guide on How to walk across Europe
Buy: Nick Hunt’s Walking the woods and the water published in trade paperback by Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Photo credits: Nick Hunt
Where the wild winds are – published in 2017 – It describes a series of walks following the invisible pathways of some of Europe’s named winds – Helm, Bora, Sirocco, Foehn, Mistral – to discover how they affect landscapes, people and cultures. READ MORE
“Where the Wild Winds are” was shortlisted for the National Geographic Traveller Reader Award for 2018 
What has Nick done since our interview
“In the past year I have moved from London to Bristol, but am currently looking after a small cottage in the Lake District for the coldest, darkest, wettest of the seasons. In 2016 I spent three months living and working in Atlantis Books, a bookshop on the Greek island of Santorini, and last year led a group of friends on a ten-day walk through the Accursed Mountains of Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. I’ve been continuing to work with the Dark Mountain Project as editor and contributor, publishing two books of (loosely) ecological and ‘uncivilised’ writing a year. But my main project has been a series of walks following the invisible pathways of some of Europe’s named winds – Helm, Bora, Foehn, Mistral, Sirocco – to discover how they affect landscapes, people and cultures. The book about these journeys, Where the Wild Winds Are, was published in September 2017 by Nicholas Brealey, and is soon being translated into Italian, German and Dutch. Currently I am working on a book about London’s feral green parakeets for Paradise Road.”
Indie publisher Paradise Road published in Autumn 2018, Nick’s study of parakeets in London – you can get a taste of it in this article that Nick wrote.
Nick Hunt shares his 20×20 Vision of walking in 2040
with Canadian Carolyn Affleck Youngs in London; she had co-authored the book with her now deceased husband, Derek Youngs. Carolyn took a walking holiday on the Camino de Santiago, in northern Spain, where she met and eventually fell in love with Derek Youngs, himself a long time pilgrim, who walked for peace. Carolyn has quite a story of long walking of her own, but we also discuss the power of pilgrimage and she and Derek 
walking together, and how simply putting one step in front of the other, can have profound meaning to an individual as to society as a whole. Behind us is bustling Bermondsey and Bankside. We had to stop several times as the ambient noise of traffic and construction became too intrusive. 18’25” 8.7MB
