I have started She Won't Get Far Her Bag's Too Heavy by Marie Stamp. After reading some heavyweight fiction, I thought that a light-weight autobiography would be just the job. Here is the blurb:
A story about a woman and her dog starting out on a walk on the South West Coast Path in 2010 with the intention of walking from Minehead to Land's End. Her dog carrying his own baggage and she carrying a huge rucksack full of things that give her self sufficiency. Sporting shin splints, she stumbles and sweats her way along, making cock-ups and dropping clangers, walking in circles and getting totally knackered. They survive hypothermia and ford streams that have turned into raging rivers after flash flooding. When one man she meets tells her that not many women have backpacked on their own with a dog and walked all of the 630 mile coast path in one go, she is determined when she reaches Land's End, to keep going and the nearer she gets to the end at Poole, the more determined and ambitious she becomes to selfishly finish the whole path. Along the way she tells tales from her youth, like the time she fell down a road side drain on a first and last date with a boy with a carrot red hair and bad acne, and the shoplifting dog she had when she was 12 years old that stole dog food so she could buy cigarettes instead, and other scams she had to fuel her fag habit. She also tells of her adventures while climbing the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc and other long distance walks she has had the privilege to walk. She somehow manages to finish the South West Coast Path after wearing out two pairs of boots and one dog.
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