All I knew about Ashby-by-the-Moor was that my father had insisted on being buried there.

Or rather, his will had insisted. It amounted to the same: me trying to squeeze into a parking spot beside a band of village green as cold February rain slanted across the windscreen. Not that there were many people there, but there wasn’t a lot of space either. The village consisted of all of two streets, arranged in a cockeyed cross with the church, appropriately, at its centre.

There were five of us mourners. I didn’t recognise the other four and there wasn’t much in the way of conversation. I wished again that I could have talked Deborah or the girls into coming with me, but Deborah was busy with work and neither Jen nor Heather had the faintest interest in a grandfather they hadn’t met. The ceremony was brief, thank goodness; the rain hadn’t let up. The priest said a few innocuous, impersonal words, and I wondered who’d arranged this. My father, presumably, but to the best of my knowledge, he’d never been religious. Could it be that, seeing the end approaching, he’d found some sad glimmer of faith? He wouldn’t have been the first.

Afterwards, I hurried back to the car. With the heater turned up to full, I took the envelope I’d received the week before from the glove compartment and emptied its contents onto the passenger seat. They consisted of a copy of the will and a small, hardback book bound in a cracked sheaf of glossy paper. The will I returned to the envelope, annoyed by its reminder that at some point I’d have to answer its summons to visit my father’s empty rented flat and collect his remaining belongings. The book I flicked through, as I had twice since I’d received it, each time with puzzlement. I still thought that perhaps a letter might drop out, some final apology or explanation or … something.

But no, unless its hidden messages were written in invisible ink, the slim volume was precisely what it appeared to be and what its title stated: A Book of Local Walks for the Solitary Hiker. The copyright page dated it originally to 1952, though this particular copy was a reissue from a decade later. It listed twenty-seven walks of four to eight miles in length, with names ranging from the studiously dull “Up and Down Faxendale” to the faintly enticing “Around Kirby Top and Past the Devil’s Saddle.” And none of that explained why my father had felt the need to arrange for it to be sent to me after his death.

I put the book down and started the engine. Then I switched the engine off and picked the book up again. I flicked to the contents page, scanned down, and read aloud, “Number 12: From Ashby-by-the-Moor Churchyard, via Thiliburton Woods and the Old Granary.” The length was listed as four-and-a-half miles. Was this the significance I’d been meant to find? I vaguely recalled that my dad had been into hiking. Was this intended as some sort of legacy?

I wanted to roll the window down and throw the book out in the rain. Instead, I put it back in its envelope. I was beginning to get hungry and there was nowhere to eat in Ashby-by-the-Moor, as there wasn’t a great deal of anything. If I set off now, I could grab an early lunch in a nearby pub.

I could. But I didn’t. I realised I was staring at my shoes. They weren’t made for walking, but they were sturdy. And didn’t I have my coat in the boot? Anyway, the rain was slackening and the sky was lighter ahead. If I’d interpreted the crude black-and-white map rightly, that was where the walk would take me. And I wouldn’t be doing it for the father I’d barely known, I’d do it for me, to stretch my legs and clear my head and make something of this otherwise wasted day.

The route took me into the graveyard. I purposefully went around the opposite side of the church to avoid the fresh grave there. Beyond, a wrought iron gate led onto a gravelled lane between the gardens of quaint cottages. Within a few metres, the lane met a gate,