In 1938, in the shadow of possible hostilities and long before he became renowned for his 'pictorial guides', Alfred Wainwright decided to go for a walk. This was not just any walk: he chose to walk over 200 miles from Settle to Hadrian's Wall and back. He wrote an account of his trek, Pennine Journey, not as a guidebook but as a commentary on the life and folk of the Dales.

In 1998, as close to the 60th anniversary as possible, A. Walker undertook the same walk and he too wrote an account of the journey and set about producing a guide to the walk using Ordnance Survey maps that are contemporaneous with those that Wainwright would have used. Through the maps, the guide tells more of where society has been rather than where the walker should walk.

Yorkshire-born author A Walker's writing centres around the earlier works of Alfred Wainwright, particularly his Pennine Journey, which he had undertaken in 1938. Walker retraced the route and found it became the inspiration for Back to the Wall, a personal reflection that uses the walk as a microcosm of life's journey. Walker's interpretation of his 1998 trek takes the form of a rambling account that compares and contrasts with Wainwright's original book using his own views and opinions as the basis of a thought-provoking and amusing yarn.