Welcome to tracyburton.co.uk, my blog about hiking and backpacking.

I’ve always been passionate about walking. Well, once I abandoned my favourite bottom shuffle at sixteen months and learned how to actually do it. In  my younger days my wanderings were limited by a lack of transport and my inability to read a map (I now drive but my map reading skills remain dire). Nonetheless, walk I did, as often and as far as possible. To me, walking and hiking was as natural as breathing … it was just something you did, something you wanted to do … unless, of course, it was raining. I become reclusive in wet weather and retain my childhood dislike of mud.

My life was transformed when I met Harri, my wonderful man and someone who loves hiking and being outdoors even more than me. Best of all, he can read a map, even the OS ones with all the squiggly lines. And we’re very fortunate in that sometimes we actually get paid to do what we love best… hiking and backpacking.

Harri started writing for Walking World website a few years ago and soon began to secure commissions. It wasn’t long before his first book for Vertebrate Publishing, Day Walks in the Brecon Beacons, appeared on bookshop shelves. Other commissions quickly followed, including work with AA Publishing and for the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority.  I found myself spending more and more time accompanying Harri on his ‘work days’. I prepared our packed lunches and was put in charge of photography, yet I longed to do more.

While I loved being involved in Harri’s flourishing outdoor writing career, one aspect of things bugged me. The remit of a guidebook author is to explain accurately and succinctly how to navigate a particular route. Guidebooks demand a lot of mapping and photographs and there simply isn’t room to wax lyrically about pretty little coastal villages, how we freed a struggling sheep from a barbed wire fence or the hilarious conversations we overhear in local pubs.

Yet so many interesting things do happen while we were out walking and these often amusing and uplifting incidents add hugely to our enjoyment. I mused out loud that I’d like to write about walking too; not in an instructional way but linking our walking experiences with my own thoughts and ideas.

As I’d anticipated, Harri was 100% supportive of the idea and, since day one, he’s been The Walker’s Wife’s biggest fan. Writing a personal blog is a bit like keeping a modern-day diary, except that I only write things down when I’ve been out hiking.  Fortunately, blogging about hiking means that on those grim days when it’s impossible to venture outside, Harri and I can log onto The Walker’s Wife and reminisce about the wonderful walks we’ve enjoyed together.

I make no excuse for occasionally venturing into the political but that’s because I believe that, whether we like it or not, politics affects us all.