Not my kind of book but I can see why people love it so much.

Ein Buch, das so beginnt:
“Jedem ehrlichen Leser, der diese Buch kaufen, ausleihen oder bekommen wird, und ebenso den Rezensenten (für die es von dreifachem Nutzen ist) meinen Gruß – und was immer sonst noch gratis zu haben ist.” kann nicht schlecht sein, und dieses ist brilliant.
Belloc gelobt nach Rom zu pilgern “ohne Nutzen zu ziehen aus irgendeinem Ding, das Räder hat”. Also wandert er zu Fuß von Toul nach Rom. Und einmal fährt er sogar ein paar Kilometer mit der Eisenbahn, da ihm ein Gottesurteil eine Ausnahmegenehmigung erteilt.
Der Mann ist fromm, aber auf eine Chestertonsch-freche Art, dass man sofort in seinen Orden eintreten möchte.
Er wandert, schläft im Freien oder in einfachen Herbergen, wo er sich mit viel Wein “erfrischt”, und er beobachtet. Allerdings lässt er sich auch durch Unbeobachtetes zu Abschweifungen hinreißen. Eigentlich besteht das Buch hauptsächlich aus Abschweifungen. Manchmal in Dialogform mir seinem “Lector”. Z.B. Ich würde gern wissen, was diejenigen, die auf alles eine Antwort haben über das zu sagen haben, was alles zu einem Frühstück notwendig ist?
Leider gelingt es wegen Unwetters nicht die gerade schwierige Passstrecke zu nehmen, und so überquert er den Gotthardt-Pass, über den er nichts sagt, da man die Beschreibung im Baedecker finden könne.
In Italien lässt er sich von Christopherus über die Furten tragen. Dann wandert er wegen der Hitze nachts.
Um es kurz zu machen, wie der alter Seemann zu dem jungen Schafskopf sagte –
Ah, was sagte der Seemann? Das verrate ich nicht.

I listened to an audiobook version, narrated by Robert Bethune. Initially, I had an issue with the reader, but then his smartass take worked well for Belloc's tone.

The book was written in the early 20th century by Belloc, recounting his walking pilgrimage to Rome. (Spoiler: you don't get to hear any of Belloc's impressions of Rome. This is about his trip from France through Switzerland into Italy, and he stops the narrative when he arrives at Rome.)

I love Belloc's humor, and, alas, the most interest for the 21st-century reader are Belloc's digressions and not the info on what the geography and cultures were like. The geography is pretty much the same, but I would expect the roads, even the trains, would be a bit different from over a century ago.

Some of the stories told in passing are really funny, and the one relating to the Learned Gentleman and Satan, in which Charles Borromeo intervenes.... I legitimately laughed out loud at the punchline. I was not expecting that specific outcome.

The downside of an audiobook version is you can't see any of the drawings, but unfortunately, most of the current publications of this public domain work have extremely poor scans from old books.

Loved this book

Fabulous -- make sure you get an edition with sketches.

Four and a half stars.. I meant to write a review some time ago, and the book is now a bit misty in my memory. I've read a good many travel books, RLS of course, Eric Newby etc. Why this book? Well, I'd just re-read his poem "Do you remember an inn, Miranda" one of my childhood favourites, so I followed the author's trail on the web, arriving at this little volume. Having a fond thought of perhaps attempting the Via Francigena, I wondered how old Hillaire had managed.

So Hillaire Belloc sets off from the middle of France somewhere and takes a pilgrimage to Rome. Now that's quite a long way, so our jaunty author elects to try and travel as the crow flies, ignoring the more circuitous and better paved routes he strode straight across hills and mountains, fords and fields as best he could with the rather poor maps he had. Consequently, he found his road pretty hard in places, even though he was still a young man, he totally exhausted himself at times. He went in the height of summer, and it was too hot through the day, so he often walked at night, stumbling his way along his journey and sleeping rather fitfully through the day. So, he made life a bit more difficult for himself than others might wish to do on their pilgrimage.

He opens his writing with a conversational "praise of the book" as he lauds his effort to the reader. Continuing, he has conversations with a third party on his way - the lector (the reader) will comment, while his persona, the auctor (the writer), tries to explain what he is writing about and the choices he's made in doing so. It's a nice conceit. He also sketches along the way, no-one would mistake them for those of a master, but they are for him I'm sure a pleasing souvenir, and for the reader a different way to understand Belloc's character.

The book blends humour, philosophy, religion, physicality, scenery, populace, and atmosphere in a very successful melange or fruit salad if you will, where you chew on an apple one second and then on a pineapple the next and then a juicy melon, each part true to its own special flavour, but a meal that when you've finished, merges, along with the ice-cream of course, into one very sustaining whole.

There is, as I suggested, a jauntiness to the writing which is appealing, though we do know that Hillaire Belloc was a religious man, a committed Catholic - so his diversions to the local churches were an important part of his pilgrimage. But there's nothing overbearing hear about this faith, and his book can be enjoyed as a very simple personal travelogue of a time and age no longer with us. Indeed, like RLS, Belloc writes of a way of travel which hadn't changed substantially for thousands of years; we no longer have that continued connection with a living past. That was a great privilege for him which I envy, but he wouldn't have known it then. Greatly recommended.

I didn't know Belloc before I was given this account of a hike to Rome from Lorraine in North-Eastern France, somehwere around the turn of the 20th century. This walking diary is insightful of the period, often humorous, but sometimes grumpy and bigoted. With a French father and an English mother, Belloc grew up in England but did military service in France in the period in between the French-Prussian war of 1870 and WWI. A student of Balliol, Oxford, he eventually became an MP for Salford.
Belloc sounded older and more cantakerous than the 30 or so years old he must have been during this self-described pilgrimage to his adored Rome. He is here a Catholic first and foremost and there are many sideswipes at Protestants and scientists/rationalists alike. He does stand up for Jewish people and frowns upon antisemitism he finds along the way, even though he has been accused of this vice himself (probably justified) himself.
The essence of the story is that Belloc has decided that the river Moselle as it flows upstream from Toul (where he was based as a soldier 10 years earlier) points directly to Rome. He draws a straight line on the map of Europe btween both localities and decides to use it has his line of travel. Nevermind that geography gets in the way, he will follow this line, even though wiser travellers would have followed the contour of the land. So he nearly dies in a blizzard on a high point in the Alps (and has to go back down the way he came, with the help of a guide), just because said high point is on that straight line to Rome.
Belloc hates the heat, and prefers walking at night to prevent him getting overheated. But he gets there in the end...
Belloc as stated, is quite a bigoted Catholic and his pilgrimage is an attempt to revive the ancient Medieval practice. What struck me, as a little aside, was his use (half in jest?) of cursing a place when he felt he had been badly treated in a roadside inn or restaurant. Hardly the behaviour of a sincerely religious man I felt, but Belloc several times on his journey, when feeling sore, turns round to "curse the place". It made me reflect that phrases like "Go to the Devil", or "May you rot in hell" (my words) were once (in a pre-scientific age) serious things thrown at people. To me it sounds to me more like something associated with witchcraft than serious Catholicism. Debate.

But all in all this is a dlightful and interesting account of a hike through Europe around the year 1900. Belloc did much more than this in his his life, but there is no space for that here.

Very charming little read. Had an almost whimsical quality it in parts and the artwork was very well placed without being intrusive.

I enjoyed reading about Belloc's journey to Rome and how life use to be.

I read the lion's share of this book while on vacation and the two experiences will forever be inextricable in my mind. The first 200 or so pages of this book are an absolute delight - worthy of a 5-star rating. Belloc peppers his thoughts while walking from north central France to Rome with thoughtful philosophy and hilarious anecdotes the likes of few books I have ever read. However, the final 200 or so pages have fewer of those charming moments of levity as the author seems to have become bogged down by the task of telling his story. Possibly this serves in illustrating how the human mind becomes less philosophical as the body suffers from fatigue.

Anyway, I hate to disparage the book as it was, on the whole, a true source of joy for me. As travel writing it is first-rate. As a directive on the good life for all non-materialists, especially Catholics - likewise. For the easily annoyed - this may not be your book.

This was my introduction to Belloc, and while it has proven to be his most famous work, I would be excited to further plumb his catalog.

9/10

This novel is briefly mentioned in Waughs Labels. Loving to dig into something completely foreign, I went into it with no foreknowledge at all. I picked it off internet database, with all the authors illustrations. Plan was to give it a chance, then abandon it with no hard feelings after a few pages, if It was not to my liking. I'm glad that I did not stop at the first hurdle.

It is a travel book. It is about a pilgrimage to Rome. It is religious a tinny bit, but I can safely advise it on everyone, as it's not preachy at all. It is something quite unique. A mesh of some philosophy, travel writing, comedy, religion, some short stories, anecdotes, jokes, geography, politics, and what not. It is wholly unique, as far as I know.

The first, and only, struggle was language. Though published in 1902, prose feels dated and much older than it is. What's not helping is casually thrown in French, Latin and one hilarious instance of ancient Geek. Added to that, the novel is very Avant-garde and unusually structured. No ordinary chapters. Author converses with his 'lector', with his readers, he discusses maps and his illustrations. For the first part of the journey I was thus on the verge of leaving him, then he entered Switzerland, and he saw the Alps! He described them in one of the most powerful passages that I've ever read, and I was sold. I had to go with him to the end of his journey. What helped is that he manages to be always entertaining. Also refreshing is that his work feels truthful, he never goes into absurdly hard to believe tales as Patrick Leigh Fermor does in his, otherwise, brilliant A Time of Gifts. Belloc stays down to earth, if he thinks that he's on a dull stretch, he just inserts a short story, or an anecdote, into the mix. And when he's telling of his journey, it feels real. As someone that loves to hike, I can relate to his experiences, his descriptions of land opening and closing around him, of vistas, of mindless treks where mind wander off to other things. Heart breaks at his wild and foolish attempt to cross the Alps through the blizzard, at his vertigo as fog clears around him, at his pain and hardship. And you laugh, and you remember forever his short wordless play, his path, and his comedy. He's rarely Waugh hilarious, but he manages to be extremely endearing and amusing.

The Path to Rome reads less like a travel book and more like Belloc’s personal journal. Because of this, the journey feels so much more real to life and it was almost as if I was making the pilgrimage along with him.