Near a dark dark wood, in a dark dark house, in a dark dark cupboard there was a graveyard of books whose crumbling headstones were engraved with the names of obscure English martyrs and Machiavellian continental popes. But amongst these decomposing tomes, where a host of booklice thrived, there was a volume, which, like certain saints, had remained incorrupt despite having been written by a far from saintly man. The volume was Hilaire Belloc's A Path to Rome. A ten-year-old Peter Francis Browne's imagination was piqued: in a claustrophobic pocket of Surrey, bounded by school, home and the Catholic Church, Belloc's idea of simply drawing a line between two cities and attempting to follow it, just from pure fancy, was an inspiring one. Thirty years later, having hitchhiked through the hippy sixties, reverted from calling everyone 'man', and somewhat lapsed in his Catholicism, he decides to take up the challenge of walking in Belloc's footsteps. Traversing France, Switzerland and Italy, Browne finds a rather changed world to that encountered by Belloc; muddy tracks have been transformed into multi-lane highways and isolated alpine communities are populated with health-conscious German tourists - walking adverts for Health & Efficiency magazine. However, the remarkable landscapes, bloodthirsty dogs, good continental alcohol and diversity of human nature have remained constant and Browne, like Belloc, encounters a remarkable collection of characters that both enchant and annoy him. Comic, irreverent and with a profound sense of the ridiculous, Browne takes us with him on the rambling road to Rome