> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 November 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099471943
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

Spanish Steps




Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail. With a donkey.

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.

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.

'Hailed as the new Bill Bryson, he is in fact a writer of considerably more substance and the jokes come thick and fast' Irish Times

  • Published: 1 November 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099471943
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

About the author

Tim Moore

Tim Moore’s writing has appeared in the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, the Sunday Times and Esquire. He is the author of Gironimo!, French Revolutions, Do Not Pass Go, Spanish Steps, Nul Points, I Believe In Yesterday and You Are Awful (But I Like You). He lives in London.

Also by Tim Moore

See all

Praise for Spanish Steps

He is a rare comic talent

The Times

A very funny writer, oozing with comic ideas

Daily Mail

An absolutely cracking idea for a book; it's got history, eccentric characters, personal growth - and plenty of really good jokes

Time Out

One of the classier writers of the humorous travel book... A very entertaining read

Observer

At last, a travel book that makes you think but also makes you laugh out loud

Guardian