A Walk Across France - Softcover

Morland, Miles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044990945X ISBN 13: 9780449909454

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1994

Synopsis

"[A] humorous and effervescent memoir of reflection, revitalization and good wine." -- San Francisco Chronicle
At age forty-five, Miles Morland left his high-paying job at the London office of a Wall Street firm and took a leap -- actually, a hike -- into the unknown. A self-described "middle-aged wreck," Miles set out with his wife, Guislaine, to walk across France, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
Setting for themselves the goal of twenty miles a day, Miles and Guislaine made their way past farmyards and riverbanks, through dusty village squares and ripening vineyards, into ancient walled cities and over sand dunes. And as the hot, dry countryside unfolded slowly before them, the couple looked back with relief -- and wonder -- at the tense, frenzied corporate life they had left behind.
The story of a walk, a marriage, an adventure, and a dream made real, A WALK ACROSS FRANCE marks the debut of an enormously entertaining writer.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Warmhearted, lightly humorous, food-strewn story of the author's walking trip across France with his wife. As Morland crosses France from the Mediterranean through the foothills of the Pyrenees to the Atlantic, he acts as straight man to his droll wife, Guislaine, and their mild snipings and pleasantries come as relief to the actual walking trip, with its towpaths, wrong turns, canals, hills, flowers, bedrooms, blisters, and dogs. Dogs, Morland tells us, are the bane of European hikers, and he walks armed with a high-pitched siren to drive them off (though, to Guislaine's distress, the siren doesn't do its job). For all the walking, though, the real high points here are back in time--in London--as Morland gives us background about the job he quit (after a long Wall Street stint, he managed a First Boston stock brokerage in London), and about the highjinks and stresses of office politics that he no longer misses after 22 years of a daily grind. Morland's account will appeal to many now under similar stress--and he doesn't give the old job or whatever new one may lie ahead a passing thought while hiking. The 350-mile walk also becomes something of a welding together with Guislaine: The couple had divorced after 13 years of marriage (and had endured three years of misery before the divorce became final), then remarried. After the walking trip, the pair wrote a book about the trip, but it was a dud; Miles took another shot at it and wrote this. In its way, more charming than Peter Mayle, and certainly not to be missed if you plan a hike through southern France. (Map) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

Walking tours are popular these days. And when you're a high-powered banker (British, in this case), it's the ticket for leaving behind job stress and reprioritizing what's important in life. That was the impulse behind Morland and his wife setting off on a 350-mile walk from the Mediterranean coast to the Atlantic coast of southern France. They had no guide--they plotted their own path and arranged for their own food and lodging. They suffered blisters, they learned French history, they argued and made up. Morland's humorous and colorful account of it all will give readers the desire to go off somewhere and do something entirely different. "We were often tired, irritated, thirsty, hot, lost and sore, but never bored." Shouldn't life always be like that? Brad Hooper

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 044990945X
• ISBN 13: 9780449909454
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256