The Fine Art of Rambling

By Bruce Shawkey

Found this cool book on the Internet, The Open Air Guide, on how to take walks. Chapters as follow:

The first begins:

WALKING AND CLIMBING

“To walk, perchance to climb." 

Hamlet,’’ Revised. 

We are not concerned with those who walk on roads as fast as they can from one place to another. They are excellent fellows, no doubt, but not wayfarers. This section is for those who roam. 

Most wayfarers begin by taking country walks of a mild type and pass from that to more ambitious routes over moorland or hilly country. This may be defined as rambling. A more advanced type is fell walking wherein the summits of our British hills are attained. There are walking routes up almost every peak in Great Britain but inevitably the fell walker sooner or later gets his or her hands on rock and scrambling begins. Henceforth he finds a fascination in choosing routes up mountains which will give him boulders and low crags at a moderate angle, finds instead of the grass and heather slopes of the walker’s way. 

It may be that he will remain content with this excellent sport, but it is very likely he will be tempted to join a roped party on a rock climb. He may even become a rock maniac, one of those people who grumble at the long grind to the rocks. But most of these men have come direct to rock climbing by chance and not after a course of graduation such as we have indicated. It is rare indeed for the fell walker to lose his love of the hills as hills, to judge a mountain by the quality and quantity of its crags.

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Reminds me a book I read I read a while back, American Ramble.  The Open Air Guide was written in 1929, nearly 100 year before American Ramble. Just goes to show, man (and women) have long loved the notion of rambling, which the dictionary defines as "walk for pleasure, typically without a definite route."