Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Memoirs

PARIS TO THE PYRENEES

David Downie

A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James

Part adventure story, part cultural history, the acclaimed author of Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light explores the phenomenon of pilgrimage along the age-old way of Saint James (Jakobsweg).

Driven by curiosity, wanderlust, health crises and with their 50th birthdays looming, Downie and his wife, photographer Alison Harris, set out from Paris to walk across France to the Pyrenees. Starting on the Rue Saint-Jacques, then trekking 750 miles south to Roncesvalles, Spain, their eccentric route would take 72 days on Roman roads and pilgrimage paths—a 1,100-year-old network of trails leading to the sanctuary of Saint James the Greater. It is best known as El Camino de Santiago de Compostela —“The Way” for short. The object of any pilgrimage is an inward journey manifested in a long, reflective walk. For Downie, the inward journey met the outer one: a combination of self-discovery and physical regeneration. More than 200,000 pilgrims take the highly commercialized Spanish route annually, but few cross France as the author did: from Paris to the Pyrenees on ancient trails, through the dark forests of the mountainous Morvan and the celebrated wine country of Burgundy, then along the centuries-old Via Lemovicensis. Downie makes the pilgrimage in his own maverick way. David Downie has called Paris and the Marais home since 1986. He has written for over 50 publications worldwide including Bon Appétit, The Los Angeles Times, Town & Country Travel, The San Francisco Chronicle, epicurious.com, and Salon.com. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light, three Terroir guides, as well as several cookbooks and crime novels. He lives with his wife, Alison Harris, a photographer, and creates custom tours via his "Paris, Paris Tours" blog site: http://parisparistours.blogspot.com/

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Book Published 2013-04-01 by Pegasus

Comments

A great writer and a very interesting trail, what more could you want?

David Downie is the master of educated curiosity.

In the tradition of Patrick Leigh Fermor, David Downie takes off on foot. Such a rigorous, slow journey—the polar opposite of airport-to-airport travel—gives him the gift of time, and the chance to absorb, taste, and experience the places he sees. Downie’s adroit, learned, and ambitious book re-invigorates my sense of travel, taking me back to the happy knowledge that the world is still large, and history unfathomably deep.

Richly textured, meticulously detailed, a compelling, picaresque narrative of adventures on the road and a sophisticated meditation on the past, present and future of France.

A wonderful book: historically, culturally and spiritually fascinating, refreshingly honest without being self-aggrandizing, full of humor and sharp observation of the people and the landscape. Downie is a great companion on the road.

Beset by the crises of middle age, an author and his photographer wife walk from Paris to the Pyrenees along the Way of Saint James.

An entertaining read… fabulous company!

An eclectic author of cookbooks, novels, and tourist guides, Downie embarks here on the genre of travel writing.

Richly illustrated with Alison Harris’s color photographs, it is not only a fascinating journey through France on foot, with illuminating glimpses into French history from prehistoric times to the present. Downie also shares his idiosyncratic observations and provocative musings about connections between the Roman and American empires, the character of Francois Mitterrand, and the shadow of both Nazi collaboration and the French Resistance. It is also an intimate, personal journey, the author sharing his candid ruminations. There are moments of comedy, many grins and even some laugh-out-loud moments. A word of advice? Don’t peek! Every page of this book is worth reading, and in order to understand the ending, you’ll have to have been there for the whole journey.

David Downie’s pilgrimage/anti-pilgrimage has two things no one else does. One is his inimitable wit. The other: he travels not just in space, but in time, creating constant delightful surprise and reassuring familiarity. An atheist who starts the Way of Saint James necessarily sees the world with a certain irony. One who finishes the trail from Paris to the Spanish border won’t let that irony consume him. It is the conversation between the two that makes this such a special book.

Bristling with knowledge and often with the insights of good fiction, Downie takes you on a trip that is as much a compelling intellectual journey as it is a rich revelation of place. It’s a hard book to put down.