The Parallel Path: Love, Grit and Walking the North
Jenn Ashworth
Jul 2025 · Sceptre
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infoThis book will become available on July 17, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this audiobook
Burnt out and in need of retreat, Jenn Ashworth emerged from lockdown with a compulsive need to walk - and to walk away. Armed with little more than the knowledge imparted by a two-day orienteering course and a set of maps, she embarked on the most epic of English walks: Wainwright's Coast to Coast.
Guided not just by Wainwright's writing but also by daily letters from her friend Clive - facing an epic journey of his own - Jenn's pilgrimage soon becomes more than just walking: a chance to reconnect and excavate, to re-engage with the act of caring for others and for oneself.
But the walk's tricky terrain is not the only thing standing in Jenn's way. As days go by, her balance begins to fail her and the act of putting one foot in front the other becomes a new exercise in caution. When a vicious heatwave forces her to pause her expedition and gives her an opportunity to investigate the new limitations of her body, Jenn is confronted with a life-altering diagnosis - and a new path of self-discovery.
Guided not just by Wainwright's writing but also by daily letters from her friend Clive - facing an epic journey of his own - Jenn's pilgrimage soon becomes more than just walking: a chance to reconnect and excavate, to re-engage with the act of caring for others and for oneself.
But the walk's tricky terrain is not the only thing standing in Jenn's way. As days go by, her balance begins to fail her and the act of putting one foot in front the other becomes a new exercise in caution. When a vicious heatwave forces her to pause her expedition and gives her an opportunity to investigate the new limitations of her body, Jenn is confronted with a life-altering diagnosis - and a new path of self-discovery.
About the author
Jenn Ashworth is the author of the novels A Kind of Intimacy, which won a Betty Trask Award, Cold Light, The Friday Gospels, Fell and Ghosted: A Love Story, which was shortlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2011, she was featured on BBC Two's The Culture Show as one of the twelve Best New British Novelists. She has also written a memoir-in-essays, Notes Made While Falling, which was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. She lives in Lancashire and is a Professor of Writing at Lancaster University.
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