Even at the age of 79 Terens Daffyd Llaw is an avid walker, a pursuit that has taken up much of his time, since he retired 20 years ago. With Offah’s Dyke both ways, the Pembrokeshire Coast Path and a host of walks in Australia and New Zealand behind him, he was attracted to the walk George Borrow took through Wales in 1854. Reading Borrow’s account of his walk in his classic book Wild Wales, immediately prompted an interest in comparing the world of Borrow with the changes that have occurred over 150 years and made the world today a very different place to what it was in his day.
In his Welsh classic, Borrow provides an account of his walk from Llangollen to Swansea in 1856, a walk which at the time would have been a pursuit of epic proportions. Borrow’s literary musings, historical anecdotes and experiences along the way, presented in the form of a journal, provide an ins...