When I was trying to find a form for my book, I did wonder whether I could use something like "In search of the perfect walk." But I abandoned that idea because in the end I thought there was probably no such thing as a perfect walk, and even if there were it would be completely different for each individual person.
Even so, as I've publicized the book, people have been asking me what my favorite walk is, and whether I could recommend a walk for them to do, and I've done my best to come up with something intelligent, even while admitting that questions like that usually make my mind go completely blank.
Then I got a call from Martin Krasnik, a Danish journalist based in London. He wanted to interview me for his newspaper, but before he did that, could I recommend a good long walk he might do in London. While we talked on the phone I dug out a map, looked at it, and started making random suggestions. Yes, he might start in Oxford Street, say by the 100 Club where the Sex Pistols played one of their few London gigs, then head east to St Paul's Cathedral, built after the Great Fire of 1666 and bearing shrapnel scars from World War Two, then head through Whitechapel, the scene of murders committed by Jack the Ripper and the Kray Brothers, and eventually go all the way to Upton Park, where in fact I used to live, one of the more grittily impoverished areas of London and home of West Ham United Football Club. Martin said he was going to do it and call me afterward.
Several days passed and I didn't hear from him. The idea that someone might have set off on a walk I'd recommended, got horribly lost and never returned, well, it might have had a certain publicity value, but on balance it probably wouldn't have been a good thing.
To cut a long story short, he did eventually call. With detours and meanders he reckoned he covered about 17 miles and enjoyed every minute of it, especially the parts when he was lost.
I felt relieved and pleased for both our sakes. And it enabled me to come up with one notion of the perfect walk. You start where you are (cf. Lao Tsu: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.") and you put one foot in front of another and keep going until you get good and lost. Then you find your way back again.