On Foot Across France: Dunkerque To The Pyrenees by Tim Salmon

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Tim Salmon was the author of The Rough Guide to France, the renowned travel bible of France for the independent, savvy traveller. For 15 years, as he travelled the length and breadth of the country, the idea for his own, personal journey gradually took shape. It would be nothing to do with cathedrals and history and railway timetables but a subjective, intimate look at the country he had been married to and grown to love and know so well. It would be a slow journey on foot, but he couldn't decide on a route, until, one day, he came across an article about the old Paris meridian line.  Renamed La Méridienne Verte for France's millennium celebrations, it runs from the North Sea at Dunkerque to the Spanish border. 

That’s it, he thought: there’s the route, a virtual line from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular, passing, with the exception of Paris, through nowhere in particular. It would bring what it brought. He would see what he saw. 

This  book is the diary of that walk. An intimate and charming day by day account of what he saw, heard, thought: landscapes, flower girls, snippets of history, curious encounters and lots of birdsong.