The Gentle Art of Tramping

Know how to tramp and you know how to live… Know how to meet your fellow-wanderer, how to be passive to the beauty of nature and how to be active to its wildness and its rigour.

The tramp is a friend of society; a seeker, they pay their way if they can. One includes in the category ‚tramp‘ all true Bohemians, pilgrims, explorers afoot, walking tourists, and the like. Tramping is a way of approach, to nature, to your fellow man, to a nation, to beauty, to life itself. It is a gentle art and there is much to learn; illusions to overcome, prejudices and habits to be shaken off.

The adventure is not the getting there, it is the on-the-way. It is not the expected; it is the surprise; not the fulfilment of prophecy but the providence of something better than prophesied.

Originally published in 1926, The Gentle Art of Tramping is a guide for anyone who has dreamed of taking to the road with nothing more than a bag full of essentials and big ideas. It gives guidance on walking, being open to discovery and being kind – advice as relevant now as it was then.

Praise:

“An absolute gem of a book” – Alastair Humphreys, Microadventures, Local Adventures for Great Escapes

“A hymn to the wilderness of the the British Isles” – Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places

“A wonderful book, so many of its points as valid now as they were a hundred years ago. A great catalyst for getting people off their backsides and out into wild places, with its can-do attitude … The pages of my copy are so dog-eared from turning down the corners to mark yet another quotable gem that I can hardly close it.” – Christopher Somerville, The January Man: A Year of Walking Britain

“Beware this book, it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing – a thrillingly subversive life philosophy dressed in alluring practical advice. Strongly recommended for rebels and the restless” – Tristan Gooley, The Natural Navigator

“The Gentle Art of Tramping is Mr. Graham’s masterpiece” – New York Herald