Book Review – November 2021
I met Helen Krasner briefly many years ago, not long after she had completed her epic walk around the coastline of Britain, which she talked about, but several years before she published her account of that journey: Midges, Maps & Muesli. By a stroke of serendipity I recently found a copy of this 1998 book in a local secondhand shop.
I hadn’t done more than the occasional stroll for years. So it seemed sensible to do some weekend hikes, at least. In fact, against my own happy-go-lucky inclinations, I decided to do some Serious Training. But somehow it never actually took place.
In 1986 Helen Krasner made a journey on foot around the coastline of Great Britain, starting and finishing in Brighton and covering nearly 5,000 miles. Her sole objective was to complete the walk and have fun doing so; she had no interest in setting records nor in becoming a celebrity. Looking back on her achievement, the amazing thing is that she did so as a slightly-built lone woman with no back-up team, very little planning and a limited budget. Also, this being the 1980s, she did it without the benefit of a smart phone and access to the internet.
Helen’s journey presents her with plenty of setbacks, which she eventually overcomes. She also encounters lots of kind, helpful people and a few unpleasant ones. Throughout it all she seems to deal with whatever comes her way with humour and good grace.
Midges, Maps & Muesli is a book that is very much of its time and serves to emphasise how much landscape writing has changed in the last twenty years or so. There are no asides, no dwelling on memories or embracing sensory associations and no stream of consciousness musings. Helen describes her journey in a very plain, somewhat traditional style. There is very little in the way of psychological insight – we learn almost nothing about her inner journey. Nor does she offer up detailed descriptions of the places she passes through and not very much at all about the landscape and its history. Instead Helen concentrates on recounting her daily mileage, her occasional difficulties with navigation and how she manages to find food and accommodation for her overnight stays.
Yet this journey clearly had a profound effect upon her. When we met through work a few years afterwards she spoke about it and then, a full twelve years after the walk, she published this book. Looking at Helen’s current website, she still gives prominence to her long-distance walk; which, of course, is fair enough given it was such a profound achievement.
The book includes a few rather muddy black and white photographs Helen took along the way. There is also an appendix with a helpful chart with her daily route and mileage. What is missing though, I feel, is a map of her route.
Finally, in January 1987, Helen arrives back in Brighton. She is greeted by a small crowd and the local press and radio. In customary fashion, however, she downplays the whole event:
I think I annoyed everyone by telling the absolute truth, even though it wasn’t what they expected and didn’t make a particularly good story. For actually the truth was very mundane—I felt fine, but not particularly ecstatic or outrageously happy; my feet didn’t hurt at all, and I’d put on weight, not lost it. I didn’t manage any memorable quotes or really give them that much to write about or broadcast. And I didn’t paddle in the sea. It was no good; I just didn’t live up to everyone’s image of a long distance walker; in spite of everything I was far too ordinary.
While writing this review I also read the 2015 e-book version. It contains an additional chapter charting Helen’s life in the decades since she completed her walk. Her story’s twists and turns includes a few difficult times and surprises but, ultimately, is very uplifting.
Helen Krasner
Helen Krasner was until recently a rotary commercial pilot and worked for many years as a helicopter instructor. She combined this with her love of writing, having had work published in a number of aviation journals as well as several books about her travels. In 2004 she was nominated for an Aerospace Journalist of the Year award.
It feels like I’ve read this, although I have read a fair few books about walking around the coast in my time! I quite like the straightforward ones with fewer musings, especially when they’re just a walk, not a reaction to x, y and z happening in their personal life. But I know I’m in a minority there!
Well I guess I’ve long since tied my psychogeographic colours to the mast! But I think there’s room for both approaches, sometimes both within the same book! Helen MacDonald’s ‘H is for Hawk’, for instance, teaches the reader a lot about training a hawk, but you also learn a lot about living with grief.
Well, hi, Bobby!
I’m wracking my brains, but I just can’t remember meeting you. Still, it was a very long time ago. Anyway, I just chanced upon this review and found it quite fascinating. It’s strange how a few missing facts can alter a whole way to interpreting things. Where shall I start?
I didn’t write about my inner journey because….there wasn’t one really! I’d just wanted to walk around Britain, and I did so. It didn’t really have a profound effect on me, but people kept suggesting I write a book about it, so I did, very soon after the walk. It got rejected, then eventually accepted by a small publisher, who went out of business before it could be published. That’s the brief version of a long story! It was all taking up far too much of my time, so I shelved it, planning to self-publish it when I could afford to. It took me until 1998 for that to be possible. I re-read it then with fresh eyes, and it struck me as too long, with too much description, and too many musings about my state of mind. A few other people agreed, so I edited it drastically. And since then I’ve been told it’s too short and/or doesn’t have another detail about me or the places I saw! Can’t win, can I?
It has pride of place on my website since, despite having written other books since then, this one has done best. So I’m not complaining. And I’m not complaining about your review either, Bobby, simply filling in some gaps for you. Thanks for writing about me anyway.
Thanks for the feedback, Helen, it’s always great to receive that when you put something out into the public domain. I hope my review’s encouraged a few more people to read your book. I’m not surprised you don’t remember me, it was a very brief chat a very, very long time ago!