. “There was memoir and biography and I had also included a lot of scientific research about walking,” she says. “My editor, quite rightly, insisted I remove it.” Rather than let it go to waste, that research was the start of. “Other people, who were much more expert than me on various topics, were very generous with their knowledge and their time,” she says. “There are shelves and shelves of research on walking, but I think people have largely found it unsexy.
Her enthusiasm extends to the extremely practical. She shows me her walking boots which don’t taper, as most shoes do, but let your toes splay naturally. They have thin, flexible soles and no heel, mimicking shoeless walking. “There was an interesting study on people who wore barefoot shoes for six months,” she says. “The muscles in people’s feet improved by 60%. So you are building muscle and, possibly, strengthening the bones.
“I wonder if sometimes it’s about perception,” she says, about walking alone. “At home we know all the horror stories and all their locations, but when we’re elsewhere we don’t have that knowledge. We don’t know about the horrible things, so we think we’re safe. And nine times out of 10 we are. We look at women in the past who’ve done big journeys and think they’re intrepid or brave, but they also didn’t have daily news stories about what could go wrong.
Walking with Annabel Streets means getting caught in the current of her enthusiasm. As a talker and as a writer she’s full of information, but avoids coming off as a preacher or a know-it-all. She is delighted to be out with the blackthorn blossom and the shouts of practising rowers. Her book has this spirit, it wears its research light and it’s suffused with the simple pleasure of putting one foot in front of the other.