Stiles & the Pennine way

About this book

"An unusual daily travel journal, 'Stiles & the Pennine Way' records an eleven-day-long walking trip in England. Seven days of the trip were spent walking the Pennine Way, a trail ranging across the Pennine Mountains. To keep from getting bored and as a way to distract herself from the steady rain, Van Horn kept track of the stiles she passed through or over along the walk by making hash marks on the sleeve of her raincoat with a waterproof pen. 'I was very tidy about my little group of tally marks,' Van Horn writes of her second day on the trail, 'and found myself admiring my sleeve a lot through the afternoon, especially since it was raining hard and I had to keep my head down.' Though the book includes Van Horn's prose narrative about her trip, her drawing of her sleeves interrupts the text in its center; in this way, Van Horn suggests that the marks and the practice of making them are at least as important as the straightforward description of the journey."