A WALK THROUGH WALES, by Anthony Bailey, HarperPerennial, 290 pages, $12.

By way of preparing to write his 17th book, English author Anthony Bailey boarded a train at Paddington Station for Cardiff, Wales, starting point of his planned walking trip south to north. His ultimate destination was the ancient university city of Bangor, situated on the banks of the Menai Strait, a narrow channel whose waters wash in from the Irish Sea. It was early spring and he was restless, “a restlessness,” he writes, “which can generally be appeased by a long walk. This time, I told myself, it should be a really long walk.”

Arriving in Cardiff, sister university city to Bangor, he strolled the streets, enjoying its disparate cheek-by-jowl sights — “An Indian take-way, a mosque, Jamaican green grocers, Chinese tattoo parlor, and Greek Orthodox church” — along with the imposing restoration of the Norman castle and Roman fort in whose White Tower Robert, Duke of Normandy, was imprisoned for the last 28 years of his life at the behest of his relative, Henry I, who with royal zeal had ordered the Duke to be blinded “for greater security.”

The following morning the author set out, backpack strapped to shoulders and waist, on a foot journey of three weeks and two days. En route, he visited some 30 villages and towns, and sought out numerous historic relics of Wales’ slumbering past. Invasion-prone, it is scarred with historical evidence of its conquest by the Romans, Saxons, Normans, Flemings and, finally, the English who took possession in the 11th century. Roman ruins still exist and castles are almost commonplace, although few are as impressive as the one in the South Wales town of Caerphilly whose buildings, moats, lakes and grounds cover 30 acres, eliciting from the poet Tennyson during his visit in 1856 the amazed remark, “It isn’t a castle — it’s a whole ruined town!” Castell Coch (Red Castle) has a more grisly claim to distinction: “At the single gate, so-called `murder holes’ set in the wall overhead allow for stones, boiling water and heated tar to be poured onto the heads of unwelcome visitors.”

The keenness of Bailey’s observations are honed with an Oxford education, retentive memory, natural talent for being a good listener, and a bent for sniffing out the remanence in Welch politics and culture. In Senghenydd, one of the Valleys’ coal mine region villages, he listens attentively when the woman behind the counter of a sweet shop says, “Most of the life went out of Senghenydd in the mine disaster of 1913. But our heart has kept beating, nevertheless.” At the same time Bailey’s eye is sweeping over the tall glass jars filled with such regional sweets as Liquorice Allsorts, Bullseyes, Glacier Mints and Humbugs.

In northern Wales particularly he is aware of the thorny issue of the vanishing Welsh language. Feeling runs high but the author wonders if it is possible to ignore the economic realities of English as the dominant language of global communication. And, he adds: “The problem is further exacerbated by an annual inflow of some 50,000 English men and women fleeing the crush of England to settle in Wales … with an equal outflow of Welsh departing to find better jobs and better pay elsewhere.”

With the vivid skill of the trained writer-traveler, he describes his climb up Pen-y-Fran, highest peak in South Wales’ Beacons mountain range; ascends Mount Snowdon, highest peak in England and Wales (3,560 feet), and tells what it is like to reach its dizzying peak, heavily clouded and swarming with blackflies and midges. From the wildly syllabic town of Penrhyndeudraeth “whose slate roofs gleam like alligator scales” Bailey walked to Portmeirion, waggishly called the folly village.

Portmeirion was built in 1925 by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis whose taste in garb ran to loud plus-fours, yellow stockings, and giddy bow ties. He wandered around Wales, purchased buildings that caught his eye, had them disassembled, and then put together again in his village. When painted pastel colors and surrounded with little gardens and rockeries, the effect was charming. Celebrities — among them the Duke of Windsor and Bertrand Russell — poured into Portmeirion. It was here that Noel Coward sequestered himself for six days in a pink quest room during which period he wrote the smash hit comedy, “Blithe Spirit.”

Arrived in Bangor (“The Athens of Wales”), the author writes, “I felt like a lone sailor at the end of a voyage, wanting to go ashore and yet dreading the loss of independence and the cessation of onward movement; looking forward to going back home but knowing it would involve having to live with the urge to set off again.” For Bailey the walk was over but for all the readers destined to dip into this richly textured and deeply detailed odyssey it is a rite of passage about to begin.

Bea Goodrich’s reviews are a monthly Books in Review feature. She also writes a review column and is the author of the award-winning nature series, “Happy Hollow Stories by Judge Tortoise.”