A Long Walk South: From the North Sea to the Mediterranean

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When Sean Rothery was a young Irish architecture student in 1950, he set out from Dieppe to cycle to Rome and back. In 1994, now retired, a 66-year old Sean Rothery decides to make another journey -- to traverse Europe from north to south, a 2, 000 mile walk, from the Hook of Holland on the North Sea to Nice on the Mediterranean. His route follows the Grand Randonne Cinq, a long-distance trail first devised by the French. The odyssey becomes a journey through space and time as Rothery, sketchbook in hand a la Le Corbusier, savors landscape, history and culture, religion, and architecture. By day seventy-four, walking has become a way of life as heat and cold, storms and flooded rivers interweave with dreamy meanderings in woodlands and meadows. The ghosts of the past are revisited not only at battle sites but also by rediscovering scents from the past such as new-mown hay and, most poignantly, the grandeur of the High Alps, where Rothery recalls friends who died in climbing accidents, and his own car accident that ended his Alpine climbing career. This is a fine piece of travel writing, illustrated with the author's own pencil sketches.