The Long Walk to Glastonbury: Via the Ridgeway, Avebury and Stonehenge Paperback – 17 Nov. 2022

I was thrilled to see that Stewart Harding had published this. I was among the many people who urged him to do so when he posted it in serial form on the Facebook page, The Ridgeway and Ancient Trackways of Britain. It’s even better as a book. I’ve been reading a little bit every day, making it last as long as possible.Most writers have used diaries merely as an aide-memoire, reworking that spontaneous truthful expression of a younger version of themselves into more glitzy literary prose, rather like a visual artist who uses their sketchbook studies as research for ‘finished’ studio painting instead of presenting the sketchbook as a work of art in its own right. This book does the latter. This is a work of art in its raw form, but a work of art nonetheless. The diary entries for each day of the six week journey are faithfully represented while the present day comments at the end of each day’s entry add perspective and poignancy. The book has provoked laughter, tears, and contemplation in equal measure. It encompasses all the highs and lows of travel, comradeship, and coming of age and has earned a space on my bookshelf among the classics of travel writing.Don’t be put off by the rather basic production. This is a sublime book, beautifully written by a now-distinguished writer already showing considerable talent in his formative (1973) years. Madhead, Squash and Roger are no hippy lay-about youths – their reflections on the walk, on spirituality, on time, on people, and their observations of nature are acute and profound. For example, I drove the 70 miles down to Lambourn to check out the Seven Barrows (I’ve walked all the footpaths near them, but had always given the barrows a miss to avoid walking on roads) and took special care to look at the beech tree growing from one of the barrows. Indeed it is curiously stunted, just as Squash described in his diary. Most people would miss that sort of detail.For me The Long Walk to Glastonbury ticks a multitude of boxes. Partly because I’m a writer myself and have kept many diaries of journeys. Because I’m deeply in love with the chalk downs of that area and have walked the Ridgeway and all it’s tributaries repeatedly. I know most of the villages, have visited most of the pubs, and am acquainted with the many buildings that used to be pubs at the time of this story. I recall with nostalgia the days when you could always hear the calls of skylarks and peewits on the downs; when the roads were empty, when you could camp mostly anywhere. This book conjures that almost mythical England of our childhood. A time when doors were left unlocked, when children and strangers could play together, and when ragged hippy travellers would more often than not, receive unexpected acts of kindness.If, like me, these things have a place in your heart; England, the hippy culture of the 70’s, ancient trackways, white horses under the stars, Sandy Denny, the company of friends, long life-changing journeys seen from a perspective of half a lifetime; if you’ve ever had a hankering to leave the Shire – this book is for you.

This book by Stewart Harding is one of the best books I have ever read. It is just full of heartfelt writing, memories, tales, moments of humour and with the warm glow of nostalgia running throughout this lovely book. Takes me back to those times in the 70s when we were young, carefree and (probably) very innocent.I enjoyed every moment of reading the Long Walk to Glastonbury and the style of writing is so well matched to the times, their adventures, personalities and for bringing back some wonderful memories.Thank you Stewart, for putting your adventures into book and picture form. I could feel that I was there with all three of you guys as you wandered the ancient landscapes and trackways in more innocent, simple times. Thank you for bringing back some lovely memories.I would highly recommend 'The Long Walk to Glastonbury' to absolutely everyone. It's one of those books that should be required reading as a part of life on this planet (a bit like Lord of the Rings)!I now need to read the 'deluxe' version 'The Fantastical Long Walk to Glastonbury' for even more memories, poems and pictures!Easily a 5***** plus book 😊💚

I've spent the last few days tucked under a weighted blanket adjusting to a temporary new life in the great British winter, particularly waterlogged here in the beautiful Welsh valleeees, a continuous torrent of thick, heavy rain slopping onto the tarmac just outside the window, the usually breathtaking views of craggy mountains now occluded by a thick and persistent mist.I had moved to Southern Europe for many reasons, one of them being my wretched Seasonal Affected Disorder. My recent return to these soggy Isles has certainly reminded me of the benefit of almost perennial sunshine, and the simple joy of not needing to find footwear other than flipflops to take the doggy out for a quick wee (she will brook no suggestion of sloshing along the cold, wet ground here any further than absolutely necessary).As I sank deeper into the sofa, this book landed on our doormat fresh off the press, and was subsequently devoured from cover to cover without the usual guilt accompanying being indoors and idle when daylight -or whatever this damp greyness is called - is burning.I enjoyed reading these tales on Facebook when they were serialised on the "Ridgeway and Ancient Tracks of Great Britain" page. Ancient places were evoked and overlaid with a moving and chucklesome document of recent social history. I was delighted to see that Stewart Harding had finally conceded to publish his diary of the 40-day journey he and his two friends took as they walked along the Ridgeway from Reading and onward to Glastonbury via Stonehenge and Avebury in 1973.Every few pages, I had to pick up my phone to look up the familiar places and people and enjoy reminders of my own connection to the Wiltshire and Somerset landscape and its many colourful admirers I have met over the years.The degree of separation between Squash, Madhead, and people I know across the west country is barely a smidgen. Whenever individuals were encountered along their way, especially around Amesbury*, I had to wonder if those affectionately-named "freaks" the protagonists met on their journey were perhaps my own parents or their friends.(*and implied in the future which follows the diary, Frome, my formative stomping ground and the centre of the known universe).I do love soaking into the untethered rambles of another wandering mind. So familiar are those revelatory moments experienced then by a bearded long-haired twenty-something surveying the starry skies from those hills half a century ago. Revelations borne of connecting to nature, chemically/herbally assisted or otherwise, and impossible to capture in text with any degree of sophistication, except as signposts pointing towards ideas. Looking at those ideas in words penned so well by another is like seeing a once-familiar face passing a smeared and dusty window. The sudden thrill of vague recognition, a hasty grasping at identification and classification, a frustrating too-fast fading into forgotten particles. The planet continues to turn, and it doesn't require you to consolidate your reflections on the matter in order to do so...Being a bit of a nature stomper myself, albeit rather less so of late (and how the lungs and calf muscles do so quickly retire from duty if you turn awhile to other pursuits) the tales of camping and walking along the wooded undulations of Wessex were a compelling lure to tromp the Ridgeway with my equally enthusiastic walking partner as soon as we can possibly manage it.I much preferred it to that other long-distance walking inspo diary, The Salt Path, which I did like but not in the effusive way in which it was widely received. Whilst I know the South West Coast Path equally well, if not better, than I do the Wessex lands, somehow, sometimes, the writing style in The Salt Path was often just not for me.I have always had a yearning for connection to the recent past just that slight bit outwith my own experience, and so the tales of those young friends in the seventies (fifty years ago?!?! Waaaa!) provided a therapeutic nostalgia hit, somehow connecting more dots, illuminating dusty memories of anecdotes previously heard.I don't know whether this is a thing common to people in their 40s (perhaps if so, only for those who, like me, are not distracted by the whirlwind of child rearing or a super aggressively timetabled existence) or if this is a symptom of my personal neurodiverse time unawareness, or just the wobbly concertina effect of navigating the space-time continuum on tiptoes, but I somehow feel like the 70s which encircle the year of my birth are closer to me at this point than even the 90s of my teens.I have always had a bizarre understanding of time, and it continues to elude me. I am still about 23, surely, aren't I? And still mulling over my own career options, so why do the sprogs I used to babysit have such impressive-sounding and long careers already? The 00s remain the present, of course, and any suggestions that the year 2000 was over 20 years ago are too ludicrous to entertain. That said, the year of these diaries, 1973, which preceded my conception by some four years, feels closer to my awareness now than, say, 2005 (when I was a similar age to the diarist) which I find on inspection is occluded by its own weighted blanket of soggy mists.Anyway, I'm rambling on, and not in a healthy hiking kind of way but in a sofa slobbing way. Vicariously living through reading, and reflecting on living through writing, whilst life is temporarily paused.Oh yeah, so basically, if you like Wessex, ancient sites, or trudging and plodding in nature, or reading about others doing that thing, or if you just want a trip down memory lane to a time when many of our parents were out there influencing the direction of culture for us against the tide of its plastification, then you may well enjoy a read of this.