Women have been walking for generations, but their voices don’t always get heard. There is a fabulous book on the subject called ‘Wanderers – A History of Women Walking’ which is well worth a read.

One of the earliest women to document her walks in Scotland was Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, who in 1822 was in Edinburgh to secure a divorce from her husband under Scottish law. This must have been an incredibly hard time for her, and she found inner freedom and peace exploring on foot, including walking 180 miles back to Edinburgh from the Highlands via Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond.

Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt’s walking diary was never intended for publication, nor were the travel accounts of Dorothy Wordsworth, who walked for thousands of miles, including a pioneering ascent of Scafell Pike in the Lake District in 1818 with her friend Mary Barker. In the early 19th century the governess Ellen Weeton enjoyed climbing the mountains of both the Lake District and Snowdonia. Her diaries were published long after her death in the 20th century, though they are rarely read.

There are dozens and dozens more women who wrote about their walking, from the 18th-century scholar Elizabeth Carter, to Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf in the 20th century, to Rebecca Solnit and Linda Cracknell in the 21st. You would not know it from published literature, but the history of walking is very much women’s history.

Today there are many more women writing about walking, and plenty of female guidebook authors. One of the best-selling walking books on the past few years was the The Salt Path, written by Raynor Winn, a true-story about Raynor and her husband's journey along the South West Coast Path National Trail.

Today, no-one questions seeing a woman walking on her own, but we all owe a big thank you to the women who went before us and who played such a big role in securing access to the countryside for everyone.