Best Foot Forward
by Susie Kelly
Overview
From the Publisher
Why would an unfit, fifty-something Englishwoman embark on a solo walk across France from La Rochelle on the west coast to Lake Geneva over the Swiss border?
And why would a total stranger from San Antonio, Texas come to live in her crumbling French farmhouse to house-sit for a multitude of boisterous and unpredictable animals?
With no experience of hiking or camping, not to mention using a compass, Susie Kelly found out the hard way that it is possible to be overloaded and ill-prepared at the same time. Scorching days, glacial nights, perpetual blisters, inaccurate maps, a leaking tent and an inappropriate sleeping bag were daily vexations, but as she hobbled eastwards, the glory of the French landscape revealed its magic and the kindness of strangers repaid her discomfort in spades.
Best Foot Forward is a hilarious and heart-warming tale of English eccentricity, the American pioneering spirit, and two women old enough to know better.
My thoughts
This book was a gift to me from a friend who knows how I love reading travel essays. It certainly didn't disappoint! Written from a different perspective than that with which I'm accustomed, that is, from the eyes of an Englishwoman instead of an American, was interesting.
It's a story about a woman who decides to walk across France, from La Rochelle to Lake Geneva, by herself with no previous walking experience. She buys a good pair of boots, a backpack, more supplies than she can comfortable carry, and sets out. The secondary story is that of the American she employs to take care of her animals and her home while she's on the road.
As usual with these types of travel essays, I want to don my shoes and hit the road too, although I'd prefer a few more showers than the author had, and I wouldn't mind some beds along the way, too. The author is the first to admit that she didn't buy the right sleeping bag or tent for the adventure, and she suffered terribly from blisters along the entire journey. Shortly into her trip she wanted to cancel the whole thing. She went back to her home, determined that the trip was over and that she'd failed, only to put the shoes back on and hit the road.
I found the book to be enjoyable and entertaining. If there's one critique, I think she could have gone into more details about the things she saw along the way. I thought her fascination with bugs was an interesting touch and quite charming, but at the end of the book I still don't feel that I know much about the French countryside.
Favorite Passage
Until 8:30 p.m., I was the only guest, with an entire eight-bed dormitory to myself. Then a couple of students arrived and took possession of one of the vacant rooms, and we joined up for our evening meal. They had a tin of chilli and a large can of pineapple slices. I had a very old onion, which when finely chopped and mixed with a battered tin of tuna and half a tube of mayonnaise formed a very palatable mush, and a packet of biscuits. We shared the pineapple and biscuits and a large bottle of Coca-Cola. They were both at university, she studying law, and he media and advertising. I envied them. On limited funds, they had to keep their holiday expenditure to a minimum, but by staying in gites d'etape and catering for themselves they could travel around and enjoy themselves for less than two hundred francs a day.
They were so kindly enthusiastic and complimentary about my efforts that when they wanted to know all about it I couldn't bring myself to shatter the illusion they seemed to have developed that they were in the presence of some sort of extraordinary pioneer. They asked how I had known how to equip myself and choose a route, to which I replied, quite untruthfully, that I had used my common sense. What I should have said was that I had employed my total ignorance, because as far as my choice of equipment went it could hardly have been worse. The sleeping bag was picked solely on the basis that it was the lightest I could find, gave no more protection than a paper bag, and was, to boot, extremely uncomfortable. It was shaped like a sarcophagus, so that the part my feet used was about twelve inches wide at most, making movement of my legs impossible. It had a cold metal zip that not only dug icily into whatever part of me it could touch, but also twisted around and tied the bag in knots during the night. All this I could have overlooked if only it had supplied any warmth at all, which it didn't.
