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The poet is always looking for new things to write about, new boundaries in which to cross, divide and focus a pin prick in time upon; for to challenge the muse is perhaps the main reason for getting up in the morning and putting the best possible foot forward. This can be quite a challenge when placed against the sometimes firm, sometimes loose under the weight of introspection, of testing yourself against walking from Minehead to Land’s End and doing a poetry performance every night along the way; there surely are better muses than making sure you don’t walk into something unsightly in Devon.

For Yorkshire’s Simon Armitage, walking away from a challenge is never an option, even when the amount of pain killers that you are taking towards the end of a journey is perhaps more than you would prescribe to an elephant with a touch of an in-growing toenail.

Walking Away: Further Travels With A Troubadour on the South West Coast Path is the latest travelling reflection and pain staking journey under taken by the poet Simon Armitage. Whilst perhaps he doesn’t paint such a glorious picture of the time between Minehead and the crusty knob of Cornish patriotism as he did on the Pennine Way, understandable really when his own childhood has been part of that particular ambition, he does bring to life many of the certain peculiarities that lay between England and the proud Cornish people as he makes his way past bluff coves, seagulls, scavengers, cliffs, other people’s insistences of reading his poetry or worse the off putting admissions of having one of his pieces of work used by a young woman for her own exams.

It is into the bear trap to which the reader finds themselves cheering on Mr. Armitage as he muses on all that he sees and the fascinating insights opened up to him along the way. It is the stranger in a strange land phenomenon aspect that really keeps the book entertaining and vital. To many the south-western tip of Britain’s natural beauty is as alien as making your way by train to Moscow from Paris, it seems an absurd notion to them that whilst Cornwall is very much part of England, it has its own discernible ways of thinking and of living life, like the Brit deciding to spend 48 hours in a train carriage when they could fly and touchdown in Red Square, alternative doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Walking Away might be the idea behind it all, to see if it is possible to even attempt to get to the southerly of all the main Scilly Isles and even perform a night of poetry in the least expected place. Instead what it shows is a type of hope, a glimmer of perspective that if a man from the mighty county of Yorkshire can attempt the journey beyond Bristol’s calling card then why doesn’t everybody, after the beaches of Spain will still be there hopefully as it becomes easier to leave children behind, it is this pin prick focus on the delights of the South West path that really is hammered home by Mr. Armitage, the travelling poet armed with a well darned sock and the determination to finish the walk; no matter the pain he is in towards ins final conclusion.

To uncover genius of the prose and the poetic heart is hard to find in many travel writers but in Walking Away: Further Travels With A Troubadour on the South West Coast Path, Simon Armitage’s humble genius shines through, a worthy and distinguished read.

Ian D. Hall