After twenty-two years spent "shouting down a phone," Miles Morland gave up his highly paid city job and walked across France with his wife. With no plans for the future, and accustomed to walking no further than the distance between a restaurant and a waiting taxi, they set off to walk from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, through the foothills of the Pyrenees.

The Man Who Broke Out of the Bank is an enormously entertaining account of the pleasures and frequent agonies of walking twenty miles a day in search of a long lunch in the shade of a plane tree. Looking back with relief and hilarity on the life he has escaped, Miles Morland wonders whether his recent remarriage to Guislaine will survive the abrupt change of lifestyle and a 350-mile walk . . .

Many people dream of doing what Miles Morland did. His book, first published by Bloomsbury in 1992, shows not only that it is possible but that the rewards can be immeasurable.