In the summer of 2010 Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. The challenging 256-mile route is usually approached from south to north, from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm. He resolved to tackle it the other way round: through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells and into the howling wind, he would be walking home, towards the Yorkshire village where he was born. Travelling as a "modern troubadour" without a penny in his pocket, he stopped along the way to give poetry readings. His audiences varied from the passionate to the indifferent, and his readings were accompanied by drumming rain and bleating sheep.