As everyone child knows, the Inuits have at least fifty words for ‘snow’. Scots are similarly blessed with synonyms for ‘walk’. Take ‘lunt’, for example, which means to step out briskly. Or ‘traipse’, one of whose meanings is to “trudge wearily”. Another handy term is ‘plodge’, which my dictionary says is a variation of ‘plod’. Wade your way through mud and you’re not only covered in the stuff, but you’re also plodging. If, meanwhile, you ‘donder’ or ‘daunder’ then you are out for a stroll. Should you hear someone in Glasgow say, “I’m away for a dauner” – the ‘d’ having been summarily dumped – don’t expect them to return any time soon. Quite often, the dauner will involve a visit to a pub.

My personal favourite is ‘stravaig’, which means to roam aimlessly. As such, it has something in common with the French ‘flâneur’. But flâneurs are essentially city-bound while I associate stravaigers with the countryside. This past year has seen people all around the globe indulge in the harmless and healthy pastime of stravaiging. With a recommended daily target of 10,000 steps we have taken to the hills and streets with an enthusiasm bordering on mania. Told to exercise lest our limbs atrophy and terrified that weight gain will make the consequences of catching the virus much more severe, we have rediscovered the joy of putting one foot in front of another. Who would have thought it?

As someone who has never driven, I feel my hour has come. A new book – Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe(Notting Hill Editions) – has added to my feeling of smugness. Though its title is suggestive of a sense of purposelessness, many of the walkers celebrated are relatively serious about what they’re doing. The book opens with an extract from Patrick Leigh Fermor, the doyen of twentieth-century pedestrians, who, in 1933, hiked from London to Constantinople, which we now know as Istanbul. It was an epic, epiphanic journey undertaken by a young man who, quite literally, had the world at his feet.

Walking removed Fermor from everyday cares and gave him a love for travel that he never lost. I feel similarly. As you traipse from A to B you fall into a rhythm and the clouded mind clears. The longer you walk the more you are left to your own thoughts. Beethoven, I learn from Sauntering, got some of his best ideas while walking in the woods.

Every culture has its celebrated walkers, be they gurus or explorers, searchers after the meaning of life or escapees from routine drudgery. We are all, as John Bunyon, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, remarked, travellers in the wilderness of this world. The horizon is our first and last destination and it draws us with the promise of the future. What lies beyond it is the great unknown. We turn a bend or crest a hill and fresh vistas appear.

The first account of a walk to fire my enthusiasm was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, published in 1879. Growing up in Edinburgh, a city of steep hills and strong winds, Stevenson was used to walking long distances in filthy weather. The adventure in the Cevennes, however, presented him with the problem of carrying a heavy pack, which he could not countenance. His solution was to hire as his sherpa a donkey called Modestine. In those days, the idea of walking for pleasure was unheard of, particularly in rural regions. “I was looked upon with contempt,” he recalled, “like a man who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with respectful interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole.” Often sleeping under the stars, Stevenson spent twelve life-changing days in the Cevennes moving in “an atmosphere of pleasure”.

Today, the path Stevenson took is recognised by the Council of Europe as a “Cultural Route”. It is one of 33 other itineraries which are part of a network on ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and which come together in Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. Not being a follower of any religion, I have no desire to take part in the ritual. Nor am I keen to join groups of walkers. I prefer to walk alone or with my wife. I am as happy on asphalt as on heather. In Scotland, we have by law the “freedom to roam” and can go pretty much anywhere as long as we respect people’s privacy and property and leave things as we find them.

The cities I am drawn to are those that are suited to walking. In London, I never take a taxi or the tube. To promenade in Paris is to play at being Balzac or Proust. New York for me is defined by its “walk, don’t walk” street signals. Florence is a near-perfect city in which to saunter, its streets too narrow to accommodate most cars. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in a place like Los Angeles, where to be without an SUV is a sign of deprivation.

Here in the Scottish Borders, I walk from our cottage across fields to the Eildon Hills. As I go I feel as if I am passing through history. According to legend, Thomas the Rhymer entered the land of fairies that lay under the scree and gorse. Some also insist that King Arthur and his knights sleep here. What we can be sure of is that it was across these three peaks that the Romans marched on their way north on their abortive mission to conquer Scotland. It all adds to the allure of my stravaig.

(Alan Taylor was deputy editor and managing editor of the Scotsman newspaper. He was a Booker Prize judge in 1994. His latest book is Appointment in Arezzo, an account of his friendship with the novelist Muriel Spark.)

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