Travels with My Donkey : One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago

From Publishers Weekly
A man, a donkey, and a very long walk: Moore's latest European adventure (after French Revolutions and others) finds him embarking on an ages-old physical and spiritual pilgrimage across Spain to the famed cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Moore entertains with his snappy one-liners and skewed views of the locals, his fellow pilgrims and his own reasons for undertaking the camino. Against advice to the contrary, he pursues his search for a donkey to accompany him, which "upgraded his camino from big walk to revelatory voyage of self-examination." Moore shines in detailing "Tim and Shinto's Excellent Adventure": during the day, he accumulates "clicks" (kilometers) and cajoles Shinto across bridges, grates and roads; afternoons and evenings are spent searching for donkey-friendly lodgings (and encountering a share of slammed doors). Fellow pilgrims (the "Baroness von Munchausen"; "New Mexico Joe") get full portraits between details of communal living and eating, and the sordid intimacies of the shared bathroom. His sections on the pilgrimage's history and the towns he passes, however, are dry in comparison to his anecdotal asides and may only appeal to history buffs or those who've traveled this route themselves. While Moore may not have found his "inner Tim," he does take readers on an entertaining, unusual adventure. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Review
"If you enjoyed Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, this feels like the natural sequel---a well-told comic misadventure with a history lesson woven in for good measure. This is about the most entertaining travel writing you're going to pick up this year. A rollicking ride through the Spanish countryside with quirky observations, more interesting company than Chaucer seemed to find, and an ass named Shinto who now has enough comic material to jump on the lecture circuit. Arriving in Santiago with Moore was even more enjoyable than the journey I made along the Camino myself. All the fun, none of the blisters." --- Doug Lansky, author of Last Trout in Venice and First Time Around the World



Book Description
"'A donkey?' blurted my family as one. For a moment it didn't seem they'd ever be able to list all the reasons that made this so entertainingly ludicrous. . . .Yes, I'd never ridden a donkey on a beach or petted one at a city farm, never even pinned a cardboard tail to one's throat after the cake and ice cream....A donkey would be my hairy-coated hair shirt, making my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela a truer test of the will, a trial."
With these words, having no knowledge of Spanish and even less about the care and feeding of donkeys, Tim Moore, Britain's indefatigable traveling Everyman, sets out on a pilgrimage to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela with a donkey named Shinto as his companion. Armed only with the Codex Calixtinus, a twelfth-century handbook to the route, and expert advice on donkey management from Robert Louis Stevenson, Moore and his four-legged companion travel 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, which houses the remains of Spain's patron saint, St. James. Over sun-scorched highways, precipitous bridges, dirt paths shaded by leafy trees, and vineyards occasionally lashed by downpours, Moore and Shinto pass through some of the oldest towns and cities in northern Spain in colorful company, both past and present. Pilgrims real and imagined have traveled this route throughout the ages, a diverse cast of wayfarers spanning Charlemagne, St. Francis of Assisi, Chaucer's Wife of Bath, and New Age diva, Shirley MacLaine. Moore's present-day companions are no less florid or poignant. Clearly more interested in Shinto than in Moore, their fellow walkers are an assortment of devout Christian pilgrims, New Age spirituality seekers, travelers grieving over a lost love affair, Baby Boomers contemplating the advent of middle age, and John Q. Public just out for a cheap, boozy sun-drenched outdoor holiday. As Moore pushes, pulls, wheedles, cajoles, and threatens Shinto across Spain toward the crypt of St. James in a quest to find the spiritual pilgrim within, the duo overnights in the bedrooms, dormitories, and---for Shinto---adjacent grassy fields of northern Spain's hostels, inns, convents, seminaries, and farmhouses. Shinto, a donkey with a finely honed talent for relieving himself at the most inopportune moments, has better luck in the search for his next meal than Moore does in finding his inner St. Francis. Undaunted, however, Man and Beast finally arrive at the cathedral and a successful end to their journey. For readers who delighted in his earlier books, Travels with My Donkey is the next hilarious chapter in the travels of Tim Moore, a book that keeps the bones of St. James rattling till this day.



About the Author
Tim Moore is the author of French Revolutions, The Grand Tour, and Frost on My Moustache. He lives in London.



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A trepid traveler bonds with his donkey during a picaresque and picturesque walk across northern Spain. Moore (French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France, 2000, etc.) brings his hilarious, smart-alecky sensibility to bear on this-well, tale about a 500-mile journey in company with his ass and with some fairly asinine fellow pilgrims. The narrative plan is hardly unique (he begins at the chronological beginning, ends at the end), but he manages the difficult task of maintaining a highly ironic and even sarcastic tone throughout. What makes it all bearable, laughable, and enjoyable is the pure vein of self-deprecation that also runs from start to finish. Moore very rarely waxes superior to anyone (or anyass) but instead chronicles his myriad difficulties in convincing a particularly willful beast of burden to walk with him across Spain at anything like a predictable clip. Along the way, the author visits many of the relevant sites and shrines (the route was walked by some 60,000 pilgrims in 2001) and does an unobtrusive job, when the situation calls for it, of leading us back to the Middle Ages for some explanation and expatiation. (A little history alongside the humiliation.) Small miracles occur on the camino (for example, a Swiss mule expert actually arrives to help with some donkey lameness), but Moore is not seeking any religious significance in things. He appears to be a nonbeliever who very rarely maligns those who do believe. But his conclusions-such as they are-are steadfastly secular. He describes the profane (there are numerous accounts of his donkey's-and even his own-excretions) as well as the sacred, and he swiftly characterizes (if not caricatures) some of his fellowtravelers: a German who insists on saying "monkey" instead of "donkey"; a woman who looks like a Barbie doll; a man who resembles the young John Travolta. Few donkey puns go unexploited ("I was ready to kick some ass"). Biting words, rollicking entertainment. (16 b&w line drawings)Agent: Georgia Garrett/AP Watt


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