Simon Armitage, poet

I try to get in a bit of a walk most days. Most times it's a toss up between going for a walk and staying in and writing a poem, but it often leads to the same thing. I go on to the moors – we live on the edge of the Pennines and Saddleworth moor, and it can be quite bleak and quite dangerous. Sometimes I go off-piste, but there are issues around here with land ownership so sometimes I stick to the roads and the routes and sometimes I wilfully transgress, which gives me a kick.

Some people have said there's a relationship between poetic meter and the fall of your foot – and possibly your heartbeat might be thought of as an iambic beat when it's amplified by walking. Often when I go for a walk I come back with a poem. There's a sense of creativity about it, and a sense of wellbeing that you are getting the organs and lungs and the blood moving. You never come back from a walk feeling worse – sometimes you come back feeling colder and wetter though, especially up here.

I'm sure that somewhere in the back of my mind I see it as a therapeutic activity. I know it can be good for a hangover. Some people believe strongly that art in general can put you in touch with yourself and through it you start feeling worthwhile and valuable, and there might be some kind of chemical trigger that aids recovery and keeps illness at bay. If a walk leads to a poem, maybe there's a relationship there.

I am 47 now and sometimes I think "How many more fantastic days out on these moors are there?' Sometimes it can be an expedition just to go up there, but when it's sunny and clear and crisp like yesterday it's exhilarating, and that gets right down to the far tributaries of your lungs that normally are breathing warm radiator air and it does heighten your sense of wellbeing.

Geoff Dyer, writer

I don't own a car, I'm too stingy to take taxis and am too impatient to wait for buses, so, when I'm not on my bike, I'm walking. Walking is the default pleasure of urban life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of flâneur and I don't just go for a walk. I walk at speed, with purpose (to get to the Coffee Plant for my elevenses, for example). And I don't notice anything except things that are slowing me down: prams that are in my way or people like my wife, trailing behind, whimpering, "Why can't we just stroll?" Because strolling is for tourists and it's exhausting. That's why they come out of our museums feeling like they've run a marathon in reverse: because they're walking more slowly than the human body was designed to.

I walk fast but I do not run. Adorno was right: running in the street always conveys an impression of terror. "Once people ran from dangers that were too desperate to turn and face, and someone running after a bus unwittingly bears witness to past terror . . . Human dignity insisted on the right to walk, a rhythm not extorted from the body by command or terror."

Geoff Dyer's Working the Room is published by Canongate.

Joan Bakewell, writer

City life cuts you off from the seasons, but walking restores your awareness. In the crisp autumn light I love the chance to kick up the golden leaves. If it rains, well, too bad. Snowfalls are best of all: especially the fun of being first to plant your footprint in a virgin field, and see the trees while the hunks of snow are still lodged in the branches.

London is blessed with plenty of parks and tree-lined streets. I can walk from my home to BBC's Broadcasting House right through Regent's Park. Its gardens are a delight, wonderfully planned and tended. The Broad Walk of tall plane trees is a favourite with walkers and the odd skate-boarder. And there's a nice cafe for a rest half way.

Weekdays, I sometimes walk to and from my pilates class. London architecture is fabulous: I never tire of its variety and the abundance of people's gardens. Sometimes I stand on tiptoe to look over tall fences. I'm really nosy about how others live. When scaffolding's up I ask the builders what's going on. Not polite, I know.

Lynne Truss, author

I've worked at home for nearly 20 years, and there used to be days when I would go to lock the front door at bedtime, and find I'd never unlocked it from the night before. In those bad old days, I used to pay a personal trainer to take me for a walk along the seafront twice a week (I live most of the time in Brighton). I've never been attracted to running – I noticed that all my contemporaries who swore by it always seemed to say: "Oh yes, I would have carried on for ever if only my knee-caps hadn't shattered into a thousand pieces. Ooh, hand me that crutch, would you?" But I'm sure self-propelled movement and fresh air are good for you. And I've found that if you talk to yourself quite loudly while walking along, other people give you a nice wide berth, too.

Having acquired a little dog 18 months ago, I thought exercise would automatically follow, and it's true that he and I are in and out of doors now at least four times a day. But unfortunately there's a snag. My adorable dog is quite small, for a start, with little legs. And although he loves to run along beside the sea with his nose against the breeze, it takes us about an hour to get there because en route he stops dead to sniff every bin, every tree, every fallen leaf. Talk about resistance training. I've got shoulder pains from dragging him alongside me from behind. In the end, I've worked out that the only way I get any proper exercise with the doggie is if I actually pick him up and carry him down to the sea and back – which fortunately he doesn't mind at all.

Plum Sykes

I absolutely adore walking as I find it a great way to start the day. I love to walk my daughter Ursula to school from Northumberland Place in London where I live to her school in Ladbroke Square. We go up and along the prettiest Notting Hill streets, and I love to get some fresh air before I start writing each day, as otherwise I really don't feel as if I have properly woken up. At weekends I love to walk on Painswick Beacon in Gloucestershire which is part of the famous Cotswold Way. It's extremely beautiful and incredibly ancient, and you feel as though you are a part of history while you walk - very therapeutic.

Andrew Motion, poet

I'm a keen walker. A year or so ago, I did a series of talks about poetry and walking and how, particularly when we hit the Romantic period, walking becomes a very important part of how they expressed their democratic feelings. Keats felt with walking he was part of the land – that he didn't have to be a rich person to be able to experience the sublime (he couldn't afford to go further afield on the Grand Tour).

I don't have enough time to do as much of it as I would like, but my wife and I go round Hampstead Heath every weekend. It's a way of escaping the city. We chatter on the way, catch up on our week. We walk for about an hour and a half, and then if we can resist the siren sound of the pub – which we usually can't – we come home. When I am by myself, the rhythm of walking, and rhythm of writing and poetry are very easily combined. Wordsworth wrote most of his stuff when he was walking – or bumming as he called it. I certainly feel that way. The movement of the body releases a poem and then confirms its rhythmic identity. The sheer volume of things that you happen to notice – the birds you coincide with, the light, the accidental mess of things. Walking gives you ideas, unblocks blockages, sets up rhythms in your head. At times, I find it difficult not to get locked on to certain phrases, which can be maddening. You want to change the record after a while.

I still lament how fat I am getting, but I certainly would be much more so without walking. And life would be very dull without it.

Rachel Johnson, journalist

Most days I walk with Coco my dog from Notting Hill in west London, where I live, to Covent Garden, where I work, wearing an unflattering, all-weather combination of hoodie and trainers (I slip into something much less comfortable when I get to The Lady). My commute is pretty peachy – I walk through park after park for an hour to get to work. I don't do it in the sleet, it's bad for morale, but I've come to realise it's the most effective and important hour of the day. I walk the dog. I make telephone calls. I exercise, but best of all, I'm outside.

I try not to listen to my iPhone – every time I plug it in, I'm reminded of what David Hockney said about people who do, which is that they are wasting their time, because they may look but they don't see. So I stare hard at the trees and the changing sky and I breathe fresh, grassy air.

Billy Bragg, musician

Walking my dog twice a day across the fields of Dorset around our house is better exercise than I could ever get in a gym – I don't have to compete with everyone and though the route may be repetitious, the natural cycles of the countryside make every day different. What I wouldn't get at a gym is me time, an escape from a crowded cluttered day and a chance to recalibrate my senses all the way to the far horizon. Walking is a time for contemplation and, on good days, inspiration.

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