Out on Your Feet

Out on Your Feet sits halfway between such classic accounts of long-distance running as Born to Run or Aurum's own bestselling Feet in the Clouds, and studies of utter mad Britishness like Eccentrics. Out On Your Feet is a book about walking by nice, normal people clad in boots and backpack, stopping to eat sandwiches and cakes - but who do it once a year for a hundred miles non-stop. And who suffer so egregiously during the whole experience that it makes them want to sign up as soon as possible to do it all again next year. Julie Welch edited the magazine of the Long Distance Walkers Association, a remarkably large group of people who meet up most weekends to accomplish arduously long walking challenges - 30, 40 and 50 miles long. Eventually she decided she had to have a go herself.
This is the story of what happened: of the 50-mile walks she took part in to build up to the big day; the singular, admirable, sometimes eccentric and above all tough-as-old-boots members of the long-distance fraternity, and finally (as far as she can remember) the full wonder, pain, horror, exhilaration, even hallucination - from groups of nuns to children's roadside picnics at 4 in the morning - of walking a Hundred.