Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

Like Tschiffely’s Ride this is a travel narrative, given heightened interest and amusement by the addition of Modestine the donkey who carried Stevenson’s luggage. Modestine, like all donkeys, was a master at manipulating her inexperienced new owner, but the two forged an understanding that took them nearly 300km through some of France’s wildest landscapes. Written in 1879, this is a fascinating account of a vanished France, beset by religious conflict, where lodging might be found in the corner of a field as well as a flea-ridden inn. The Robert Louis Stevenson Trail is now a popular walking route through the… show more.

In 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson came to the Cévennes, a remote, mountainous part of southern France where Protestantism was still the main faith. ‘The best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend,’ writes Stevenson in his introduction, and throughout his 12-day journey, his stubborn companion and beast of burden was a donkey called Modestine whom he never quite managed to master and whom some readers may at times pity.

His route is now waymarked as a long-distance footpath, the GR70, or Le Chemin de Stevenson, and having walked some of it myself, the area remains almost… show more.