Customer Reviews

A Walk Across France

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you are looking for a travel-log of things to see and do as you walk across France, then this book is not for you. The content of this book is really a fragment of Miles Morland's biography. It can be considered a daily diary describing the progress of Morland and his wife (Guislaine) as they walk across southern France from the Mediterranean to the French coast. Dispersed among the descriptions of countryside, farm animals (especially dogs and one amusing encounter with a very large bull), hotels and cafes are vignettes of the Morland's troubled marriage, and Morland's career "Shouting Down The Phone" in the financial districts of London and New York. The walk is the Morland's first venture after Miles has "retired" from "Shouting Down The Phone". (I am repeating the phrase just to mimic one aspect of the book.) Undertaking such a walk deserves considerable praise, especially as neither of them had any prior claim to physical fitness. The walk was made less difficult by carrying light packs and walking relatively small distances each day. Extensive planning helped them identify towns and villages with suitably comfortable beds and restaurants which might provide shelter and food at night. Even so they do not find things as idyllic as many readers might expect from the title. The faults of many of the accommodations and cafes they visit are noted in some detail, although without malice - I suspect that the Morland's expectations were higher than is the reality of village France. It's worth noting that although Miles did not miss his old job during and immediately after the walk (he planned on becoming a writer), he does appear to have gone back to it in recent times. Whether his marriage survived remains unanswered!

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.

I found this to be a wonderful blend of the physiological challenge of undertaking such a walk and the emotional challenge of doing so with a partner and in a foreign land. Morland slips into recollections of his former life ("Shouting Down the Phone" in stocks and bonds, and pasting together a cracked marriage) just at the right moments, like daydreams that swoop down and fly away with your mind without warning. I was as driven as they were to reach the Atlantic, and I read the book more quickly than any other in recent years. And Morland's introspective look at career vs. heart goals was inspiring. I was ready for an open-ended sabbatical before I read this; now I'm hellbent.

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.

Perhaps a bit unfair, I read this first, before I read Bryson's latest. Also, I could relate a little easier to a walk of a more modest length than a 2000 plus mile walk. I'm a bit of a francophile, and I could picture the small towns and hamlets, the tiny bistros and some of the less than pleasant hotels. It was a wonderful way to take a vacation and not have the blisters. Great reading for a cold and rainy November when you could use a vacation, but know there's none in sight!

This mini-saga of a privileged investment banker who gave it up for the simpler life of a writer left me a little unfulfilled and tired. The prose was engaging enough, but for one who was expecting a little more encouragement about undertaking a similar adventure, it took some air out of my sails. It was not the best time of year nor the best part of France to take such a walk. There were some interesting moments, and reflections about his mid-life crisis and the pursuit of an ideology, but it rang a little hollow and was typically narcissistic in tone, as many personal journals tend to be. To its credit it did not ring of the arrogant yankee condescension found in, say, Paul Theroux, but I would have preferred more advocacy in the message to the reader. Travel writing of this sort should have practical elements (it does), a bit of history (it does) and cultural observations (ditto). But above all it should possess vibrancy and life and guide the imagination to aspire to take a 4 week walk thru France. Unfortunately, this was a little like having to watch a stranger's home movie

To choose a long walk (about 350 miles) is inspirational. What's troubling is a narrator who lacks the self-awareness to see the silliness in making up rules like "seven minute breaks." Miles, this proverbial type-A personality, thinks he's mellowing, loosening up, leaving Wall Street thinking behind. But he's a complete control freak who refuses to even let his wife see his bible of maps. One hopes that he'll grow and even poke fun at his rule making. But he never does. Still, this is not a bad book. It's just waylaid by a bourgeoisie label-conscious demand for Evian. Part of it might be the sophistication of seeing Europe as an easy adult playland. Aspects of the marriage are revealed that are really quite daring, much like the choice of undertaking the adventure. As far as the decription of food and wine, it wasn't particularly knowledgeable nor descriptive. Maybe it's just too dated.

I enjoyed the stories of the walk, the terrain, his investment banker career, the preparation and the marriage (and I am not much of a reader of stories of marriages). Their kids' attitudes toward the walk were great. (My Dad used to work in the City. Now he walks.) The character sketches of the people they met were wonderful. Great dry sense of humor. Their different takes on things were interesting. (She's French, he's British but not raised in the U.K.) It's not a guidebook or a foodie journal. You gotta love someone who keeps trying to work bits of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem into his story to explain how he and his wife felt. His wife really is the hero of the story, as he says on the flyleaf, but they both change over the course of their adventure. I would gladly read it again -- and gladly sit next to him or his wife on any flight anywhere. Wished there was more.

I absolutley adored this memoir of Miles & Guislane Moreland's inspiring walk from sea to sea, Mediterrean to Atlantic across France. From the small bed & breakfast type inns to the larger hotels, the changing landscapes, and of course, the dogs(!) they encountered made for a far too quick of a read. I was enjoying their trip so much that I wanted their walk to go on for another 300+ miles! Makes one want to go on a walk as well, to the point of looking forward to blisters, afternoon exhaustion, and picnics of wine and cheese. And the insight gained by living a simpler, but far more satisfying life.

I read this with the constant hopeful expectation that it would get better, and then suddenly it was over -- kind of like their trip. Didn't get better. The Morlands are not particularly likable -- he's patronizing, controlling, complaining, condescending, and she honestly just wasn't represented as more than a vain, two-dimensional sidekick, like a pet he brought along. There is no real joy or revelation or savoring percolating throughout this book -- it's flat. It's basically a running narrative of many complaints of the dreary French countryside, the passable or repetitive food, the rude French people, the rude French dogs, etc. Anything potentially interesting ends up as just perfunctory descriptions -- this is more like a letter home to relatives than an engaging read for an audience. It's a good example of how NOT to engage an audience in your journey. But then again, Miles himself didn't seem that engaged in his journey either. In the end, they went to Biarritz anyway, and that kind of says it all.