In 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out in a pair of hobnailed boots to chance and charm his way across Europe, ‘like a tramp, a pilgrim or a wandering scholar’, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Seventy-eight years later, I followed in his footsteps.
My first book recounts a seven-month walk through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey on a quest to discover what remains of hospitality, kindness to strangers, freedom, wildness, adventure and the deeper currents of myth and story that still flow beneath Europe’s surface.
Finalist for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2015. Named as a Book of the Year in the Financial Times and the Spectator.
A glorious book, rich with insight and wit. He set out on an homage to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s legendary tramp across Europe in the early 1930s, but his journey became – of course – an epic adventure in its own right. Magnificent
– Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland
Vivid and hard-won
– Giles Foden in Condé Nast Traveller
Mr Hunt has created an illuminating addition to what the travel writer Robert Macfarlane calls ‘the literature of the leg’. The shepherds and the fishermen are long gone, but Mr Hunt controls his nostalgia and avoids mimicking Leigh Fermor’s flamboyant style. Still, his inspiration rubs off, like the skin on Mr. Hunt’s feet.
– Dominic Green in The Wall Street Journal
This moving and profoundly honest book sometimes brings a sense of unlimited freedom, sometimes joy, sometimes an extraordinary, dream-like dislocation: always accompanied by a dazzling sharpness of hearing and vision … How touched and fascinated [Fermor] would have been to read this book
– Artemis Cooper in the Spectator
Published in Italian as Camminando fra i boschi e l’acqua by Neri Pozza
Available in hardback and paperback here.