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Author: Judith Galblum Pex

Publisher: Cladach Publishing

ISBN: 978-0-97-596195-7

Author Judy Galblum Pex and her husband John (who is from Holland), decided to move to Israel thirty years ago. They currently run a hostel called The Shelter Hostel which is open 365 days a year. The couple have four children.

Imagine walking 600 miles up mountains and valleys? Well Judy and her husband did just that and as Judy says, at their age it is quite an achievement.

 Armed with backpacks, bottles of water, and some granola bars to sustain them on their quest to walk the Israel Trail, Judy never imagined she’d end up writing a book about it.

However Judy has published Walk the Land about her and John’s amazing journey through Israel.

When I heard of this book I thought it would be excellent, amazing , a story of a journey of discovery. Yes it was all of those elements I hoped for and yet I just felt something was missing perhaps.  

It was simply Judith’s sketchy accounts of their achievement walking the trail. The way she’s written this doesn’t really help. Judith could have enlarged a bit more about their adventures.

They encountered other fellow hikers, learnt how to survive in the wilderness, learnt to trust each other and discovered a few things they hadn’t known, but really I was willing for something else to happen. I wanted something more exciting to materialize.

However we didn’t see much of this and as for the cultural encounters that this book promises the readers, we didn’t get to hear much of that either. I would have liked to read more about it but sadly there wasn’t enough information . Here and there Judith gives a rough account of some of the culture of this country but nothing that amazed or surprised me.

We do see how throughout the journey that Judith turns to God a lot in her time of need, especially when getting a little lost on the Trail and losing the trail sign- posts. She and John end up spending a night in a cave which kind of brought some element of the wilderness in but there were always people close by.

You learn quite a lot about the couple’s values and how the cope with their relationship.

The wonderful photographs in the book make up for the sketchiness of Judith’s descriptions, giving us a better insight into the areas which she mentions. We get to see a sunset at Nahal Rham, a desert, and the one image I did really like out of the fifteen photos in the book was a cactus forest. A thing I never knew existed!

You might really enjoy this six hundred mile trek but I was a bit bored in places.  

The above review was contributed by: Jessica Roberts: Jessica has been a book reviewer for a newspaper and a national women's magazine and is working on a novel. To read more of Jessica's reviews CLICK HERE