A very young author a boy of eighteen a walk around the U.K. The countryseen through his eyes through his youthful eyes.A fun entertaining read .#i went for a walk #netgalley

At first I thought Gabriel Stewart beginning his story telling us about his new job demonstrating foam boomerangs was appropriate because boomerangs fly around and never really get anywhere. This was the short "thinking about the trek stage" and the book improves quickly once he begins his trek. I did enjoy the way he described many things...I think he thinks like I do, perhaps his mind thinks faster than the words come. For example, "Sam lit his fire. Not on the ground! He had some weird fire thingy...."" That made me smile, as "thingy" is a word I often use and if people don't get it, then too bad. However, he's not limited to words such as "thingy", this book is the first I've seen where someone actually uses the word "xenophobia" and in this day and age everyone needs to know what xenophobia is. In amongst the ancedotes there's some good, basic advice. Don't buy trekking gear on-line because where you'll be confused by all of the various versions of "light" and "lite": Ultra; lite, lite minus, lite plus...Do go to a good store in person. Makes sense.
So, to sum it up. This is a quick read. It rambles a bit here and there, but that didn't really bother me because it's a rambling, casual kind of story. #IWentForAWalk #netgalley #GabrielStewart

The author is an 18 year old who sounds like an 18 year old plus a bit heavy on the ADD. He uses the expression "I mean" literally 40 times.

Reminds me of Thoreau's Merrimack and Concord: talks about everything but the trip. A drunk story, an environmentalism bit, a thing about metabolism and how impractical veganism is, foot problems, environmental activism...

It kind of makes me want to burn all of my notebooks from when I was that age because I know I wrote a bit like this.

Having said all that, British teenagers might find it more relatable.

I think Gabriel Stewart should have waited about 20 or 30 years, gained some life experience, and then went on his soul-searching, not-for-charity, but sort-of-for-charity-walk, so that his book could tell a better, more mature story. Much of this reads like the diary of a frat boy, Drinking, drinking, and more drinking followed by poorly planned walks that ended in the nonsensical ramblings of exhaustion.

I’m certainly not claiming to have ever walked a thousand miles during a gap year and it was an ambitious goal, but I don’t really consider these brief journeys interspersed with trips back home to watch football on the tele true to what he claimed he was doing. A thousand-mile trek should be one continuous journey, not a series of short trips. Add to that the slow decay of his flat feet and inflamed ankles, and the whole journey is waylaid before he even reached the halfway point.

I am not sure how drinking, dancing, and doing a protest run through a Welsh mining site is supposed to help with recovering from inflamed, flat foot syndrome, but that is what Stewart chose to do. Unfortunately, it did not make his gap year or his story any more interesting. The whole thing is a bit of a mess really. By the time he switched from walking to cycling, what little interest I’d had waned entirely, though I did enjoy the bit about Wells. Who doesn’t get a kick out of seeing the town where Hot Fuzz was filmed? It also has quite a lovely cathedral.

It's a shame he didn’t delve deeper into the mental health aspects of his musings. I think he was finally about to say something significant, something that would have helped to explain his emotional state during some of his lonely walks, but instead he leaves the subject all too soon and goes onto a kind of summarizing ramble.

The whole book lacks focus, which made it rather tedious to read. Frankly, I don’t really recommend this one.

The author shows promise but his age and immaturity was obvious. It started out well but turned rambling as the journey disintegrated. It is also not meant for an American audience because a lot of the words and phrases and references were lost.

I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. The author has an engaging style and the saga of his long walk was humorously written and reminiscent of Bryson at its best. Some passages were in need of editing and the tendency to ramble off into side topics grated at times. An assured debut for a 19 yr old, however, and I will be interested in anything else he turns his hand to writing.