This is a love story and it's a book about walking. A group of friends decide to make a trek across the country from one coastline to another. They're a motley crew and we get to know them as they rub along together. 

Very quickly the numbers drop off and we're left with just Marnie and Michael, approaching their forties and rather wounded by where life has taken them. Relationships have failed, work isn't what it was but, although they don't know each other at all, walking together is helping them get a new perspective. And they're finding they have some sort of connection.

So what will happen to them? Will their relationship develop? Will they get to the end of the walk, together? 

It's a wonderful book that takes you, as a reader, away from daily life, just like the characters. You feel you're trekking along with them, in all weathers, feeling the pain, enjoying the landscape, excited at what the accommodation will offer that night, making new friends, finding life can be simpler and happier.

There are funny quips throughout and brilliant observations on the absurdities of life. I loved it. (Though I have to say that I was expecting a little more at the end. Sorry, just got to put that out there.)

And I am already planning a walk for myself (just like thousands of others are likely to do...?!).