From John O'groats to Land's End: Or, 1372 Miles on Foot; a Book of Days and Chronicle of Adventures by Two Pedestrians on Tour

In the summer of 1914, two brothers set out to walk the length of Britain. They begin at John O'Groats, the northernmost tip of Scotland, and aim for Land's End in Cornwall. The distance: 1,372 miles, entirely on foot. What begins as an audacious adventure becomes something more: a chronicle of early twentieth-century Britain seen at walking pace, through weathersome days and chance encounters with strangers, across moors and through villages now lost to time. The Naylors document the small dramas of the road - a broken boot, a friendly farmer, the particular exhaustion of the three-hundredth mile. There's no urgency except their own stamina and the next mile marker. This is travel writing before tourism, when crossing your country on foot still meant something. The book captures a Britain on the eve of enormous change, preserved in the amber of two young men walking slowly enough to see it.