Publisher's Synopsis
A collection of extracts from the books of the popular travel writer on France Susie Kelly. In 'Travels With Tinkerbelle, 6,000 Miles Around France In A Mechanical Wreck' the author and her husband devised a simple plan - to take a tent and the dog and drive around the perimeter of France. Like many simple plans it went wrong before it started... In Best Foot Forward, A 500 Mile Walk Through Hidden France, Susie walks solo from La Rochelle to Lake Geneva with a tent on her back whilst her Texan friend Jennifer struggles by on her first ever trip to France, looking after Susie's smallholding and caring for a menagerie of animals. In The Valley Of Heaven and Hell - Cycling In The Shadow of Marie Antoinette, novice cyclist Susie dons unflattering lycra to cycle the little-known Marne Valley and Champagne regions of France. She takes the identical route taken by Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI when they tried to escape from the Revolution, and their journey back to their executions. In Swallows & Robins, The Guests In My Garden, Susie stays at home for a change. As the world's worst housekeeper, running holiday homes wasn't, with hindsight, a sensible idea. But two collapsing buildings on her land would cost more to demolish than to restore. Thus she became a seasonal landlady and, along with the assorted guests, came Ivy into her life, The Cleaning Lady From Hell. In her memoir, I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry..., the setting moves away from French travel to a childhood in 1950s/60s Africa. With uncompromising honesty and hints of her usual humour, Susie describes emigrating, from post-war London in every shade of grey to the technicolour splendour of Kenya, as part of a dysfunctional family. A US Amazon Paid Top 100 bestseller.
