As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentricity.

Author and academic Sophie Coulombeau completes these imaginative journeys with her newborn baby navigating York - a city and self once familiar, but now elusive and uncanny.

Producer: Ciaran Bermingham