Spanish Steps

by TimMoore (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $3.23

  Spanish Steps recounts Tim Moore's pilgrimage along the ancient five-hundred-mile route from St Jean Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, housing the remains of Spain's patron saint. His companion on the walk is a donkey called Shinto. Tim Moore derives bounteous amusement from his peculiar fellow travellers, an assortment of devout Christian pilgrims, new-age mystics and people looking for a cheap, boozy outdoor holiday. He also muses on pilgrims past, an illustrious crowd including Charlemagne, St Francis of Assisi and Chaucer's Wife of Bath. Tim Moore himself is untroubled by any religious belief, does not speak a word of Spanish and knows nothing about donkeys. But armed with the Codex Calixtinus, a twelfth-century handbook to the route and expert advice on donkey management from Robert Louis Stevenson, he sets out to master this most intransigent of beasts and to excise the cancer of cynicism from the dark heart of his sceptical soul. Hilarious and utterly original, Spanish Steps is an ideal balance of travel, anecdote and dry wit.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.23

  Spanish Steps recounts Tim Moore's pilgrimage along the ancient five-hundred-mile route from St Jean Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, housing the remains of Spain's patron saint. His companion on the walk is a donkey called Shinto.

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $13.73

  Being larger than a cat, the donkey is the kind of animal Tim Moore is slightly scared of. Yet intrigued by epic accounts of a pilgrimage undertaken by one in three medieval Europeans, and committed to historical authenticity, he finds himself leading a Pyrenean ass named Shinto into Spain, headed for Santiago de Compostela. Over 500 miles of extreme weather and agonising bestial sloth, it becomes memorably apparent that for the multinational band of eccentrics who keep the Santiagan flame alive, the pilgrimage has evolved from a purely devotional undertaking into a mobile therapist's couch. Ludicrous, heart-warming and improbably inspirational, Spanish Steps is the story of what happens when a rather silly man tries to walk all the way across a very large country, with a very large animal who doesn't really want to.