Paris to the Pyrenees

by David Downie

Overview

Part adventure story, part cultural history, this “enjoyably offbeat travelogue” explores the phenomenon of the spiritual pilgrimage (Booklist).

Driven by curiosity, wanderlust, and health crises, Downie and his wife walk across Paris on the old pilgrimage route Rue Saint-Jacques then trek about 750 miles south to Roncesvalles, Spain. The eccentric route would take 72 days on Roman roads and The Way of Saint James, the 1,100-year-old pilgrimage network leading to the sanctuary of Saint James the Greater in Spain. 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 meets the outer one. More than 20,000 pilgrims take the highly commercialized Spanish route annually, but few cross France. Downie had a goal: to go from Paris to the Pyrenees on age-old trails, making the pilgrimage in his own maverick way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639360604
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	11/15/2021
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

David Downie, a native San Franciscan, lived in New York, Rome, and Milan before moving to Paris. Downie’s travel, food and arts features have been published worldwide. He is the author of two previous novels and over a dozen nonfiction history, travel and food books, including the highly acclaimed Paris, Paris; A Passion for Paris; Paris to the Pyrenees; and A Taste of Paris. He divides his time between France and Italy with his wife, the photographer Alison Harris.

What People are Saying About This

Michael Ondaatje

David Downie is the master of educated curiosity. With him we discover Paris, a seemingly public city that is, in fact, full of secrets—great lives, lives wasted on the bizarre; forgotten artisans; lost graves. I have walked some of the city’s streets with him, and reading this book is just as tactile an experience.

Editorial Reviews

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

G. Y. Dryansky

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.

Janet Hulstrand - Bonjour Paris

Evocative and moving… Downie’s quest is unconventional in tone and spirit as well as route. A lively wordsmith, Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. He also brings something more, a longing that he himself can’t pin down at the beginning… they encounter a memorable succession of taciturn, deep-rooted local farmers and gregarious, transplanted-from-Paris innkeepers. They also encounter the multi-layered, interweaving pathways of French history, commerce, religion, and spirituality—and manage to tuck in a few sumptuous celebrations of French food and wine, too. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present and casts a light on something even greater: the truth that, however we choose to label our journey, we are all pilgrims on a common quest, to answer why we wander life’s question-paved path.

Don George - National Geographic Traveler

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.

Andrew Riggsby

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

James Martin - About.com Europe Travel

Perhaps the most evocative American book about Paris since A Moveable Feast.

Jan Morris

David Downie is the master of educated curiosity. With him we discover Paris, a seemingly public city that is, in fact, full of secrets—great lives, lives wasted on the bizarre; forgotten artisans;
lost graves. I have walked some of the city’s streets with him, and reading this book is just as tactile an experience.

Michael Ondaatje

Brilliant, witty and stylish.

Anton Gill

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.

Imogen Robertson

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.

Frances Mayes

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.

Sandra M. Gilbert

An entertaining read… fabulous company!

Jackie Lyden - "All Things Considered

An entertaining read. David Downie is fabulous company!

Jackie lyden

Evocative and moving… Downie’s quest is unconventional in tone and spirit as well as route. A lively wordsmith, Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. He also brings something more, a longing that he himself can’t pin down at the beginning… they encounter a memorable succession of taciturn, deep-rooted local farmers and gregarious, transplanted-from-Paris innkeepers. They also encounter the multi-layered, interweaving pathways of French history, commerce, religion,and spirituality—and manage to tuck in a few sumptuous celebrations of French food and wine, too. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present and casts a light on something even greater: the truth that, however we choose to label our journey, we are all pilgrims on a common quest, to answer why we wander life’s question-paved path.

National Geographic Traveler - Don George

Beautifully written and refreshingly original. Curious and attentive to detail, Downie is appreciative yet unflinching in describing his adopted home.— David Armstrong

The San Francisco Chronicle

Evocative and moving. Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present.

National Geographic Traveler

Downie is a saunterer, wandering down narrow ancient streets and picnicking in storied graveyards like Père-Lachaise. He captures the sort of people and places missed by those jetting from starred bistros to hotels with showers.— Dan Rubin

The Philadelphia Inquirer

“An entertaining read. david downie is fabulous company!” —Jackie Lyden, All Things Considered, National Public Radio

“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.” —Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun

“David Downie is the master of educated curiosity. I have walked some of the city’s streets with him, and reading this book is just as tactile an experience.” —Michael Ondaatje

“Evocative and moving. Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present.” —National Geographic Traveler

From the Publisher

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. Just before he turned 50, food and travel writer Downie (Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light, 2011, etc.) discovered that his gluttonous ways had finally caught up to him. Doctors told him that he had become "in essence, a walking foie gras" and was in imminent danger of liver failure. Disillusioned as well by "the forced cleverness of corporate magazine writing," Downie decided to take time off to recover his health and rejuvenate his world-wearied spirit. A few days before Easter, he and his wife set off down the Rue Saint-Jacques, which marked the start of the route medieval pilgrims took from Paris to the shrine of St. James in Spain. Downie's desire to trek across France had little to do with any need to find God. "I hadn't escaped the gurus and drug culture of California to wind up Catholic in France," he writes. His journey--most of which would take him along old Roman roads and pilgrim routes that wound through the Burgundy countryside--was one he hoped would re-inspire him to ask the "big questions" that had once fired his imagination. Along the "maverick way" the couple followed (and which he documents with photographs), Downie was drawn to the way Celtic and Roman history intermingled in the landscape, architecture and people. He came to understand that however modern France appeared to be, it lived "simultaneously in the past and present." More profoundly, he realized that he was ultimately no different from the pilgrims who had walked "The Way" before him. His pilgrimage, like theirs, was "both the question and the answer" and a means to heightened awareness. A witty and intelligent spin on the spiritual-journey motif.

Kirkus Reviews