A Walk Across France

by Miles Morland

Release Date: 20 September, 1994

Edition: Paperback

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Fun, amusing, and inspiring

I enjoyed the bemused, self-deprecating tone of the narrator in this story. He is a typical Englishman and he knows it, and he plays this as a strength in giving us his impression of life, the Walk he and his half-French wife take across France, and his mid-life crisis. As I read the book, I felt like I was making a friend.

The descriptions of the countryside and the sights were a little sparse, and I found it hard to imagine what it all looked like. Also, the snippets of history provided were a little jarring and disconnected, and not terribly interesting. But the thing that makes this book a winner and redeems it is the gentle and wide-eyed optimism of its protagonists, the Morlands, as well as their indomitable spirit in facing the hardships of walking hundreds of miles.

I was hoping to learn a little more about France, but still thought this book was a nice read for while I was commuting on the subway to work. Sometimes my journey felt like it was paralleling the Morlands'.

I recommend this book if you like travelogues and are interested in France.

British couple hikes from Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

This charming book tells the true story of a hike across France. Miles Morland and his French wife make this trip both to commemorate his retirement at age 45 and to try to mend their strained marriage. The author quits his high-pressure financial market job in London and takes a month long walk across France with his wife. They allow a month for the five hundred kilometer trip and set a grueling 20 to 30 kilometer per day pace for themselves. The author is strangely frugal for someone of his background. They stay in second-rate hotels in unfashionable parts of towns. They take meals in out of the way restaurants and are sullenly served by the haughty locals. His wife buys a pair of hiking boots to replace the uncomfortable blister-causing pair she brought from home, which they mail back to England. They take with them only the things that will fit into rucksacks they carry on their backs. This trip was a unique quest, more an ordeal than an adventure. Dogs, heavy traffic, and blistered sore feet torment them. I feel that they enjoyed themselves less than one has a right to expect on a month long vacation. An engaging read about a trip that I wouldn't want to try to duplicate myself.