I’ll be introducing In Search of France’s Green Meridian, my new book, at Shaftesbury Arts Centre on Saturday 30 June, 3pm for 3:15pm.
See http://www.shaftesburyfringe.co.uk.

The interview I gave is at https://soundcloud.com/user-856659193/keith-walton-shaftesbury-fringe-podcast.

Here’s my publicity blurb:

 

In Search of France’s Green Meridian:
A serpentine cycle ride from Dunkirk to the Pyrenees

In 2000 the Paris Meridian was designated la Méridienne verte. Millennium markers were put up along it, 10,000 trees (that’s one every 100m) were to be planted, cycling and walking trails made. 

Intrigued to find out how this ‘green spine’, this new knitting-together of France marked by trees now fifteen years grown had developed, I cycled it, from Dunkirk to the Pyrenees.

I visited cathedral cities and battlefields, the broad fields and villages and soft-flowing rivers of la France profonde, barren uplands, to the burning South, and returned at last to the smallholding where, forty years ago, I tried to live a rural dream … exploring the birth of the Gothic, the many Centres of France, the sources of Le Grandes Meaulnes, the Albigensian crusade, and much more, on a 1350-mile road trip through the richness and variety of this ever-fascinating country. 

Please join me as I talk about some places, incidents and reflections on my journey. You’ll be able to choose what I talk about, and there’ll be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.

Shaftesbury Arts Centre, Saturday 30 June, 3:15 to 4:15pm.  Free.

My book of the trip will be available at the special Fringe Festival price of £5.