A Walk Across France - European Travel Books

Paperback - 20 September, 1994 - Ballantine Books
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By: Miles Morland
ISBN: 044990945X

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Reviews by readers

A wonderful adventure story. Maybe a love story, too.

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.

A fragment of an autobiography

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!

The Travels of an Inspired Type A

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.

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