The Wrong Way for a Pizza

Author and journalist Brian Mooney was winding down after walking 1,300 miles from Coggeshall to Rome when a friend made a teasing comment: “In the old days pilgrims didn’t have the luxury of flying back. They walked home!”

Two years later, Brian rose to the challenge. He packed his rucksack, laced up his walking-boots and set off to make the journey in reverse. The Wrong Way for a Pizza is the account of his ten-week walk from the banks of the Tiber to the banks of the Blackwater – a mirror-image of A Long Way for a Pizza, the book he wrote after he walked to Rome in 2010.

The author keeps bumping into the ghosts of his outward journey. He gets used to being told by Rome-bound pilgrims that he is walking the wrong way and, with the sun behind him lighting up the Tuscan landscape, he revels in different vistas and new horizons. He crosses paths with a family on a donkey cart, an art dealer, a photographer, a former Guards officer, a ferryman, a university teacher and an ex-journalist – and, as before, he seeks out exotic ladies to massage his tired limbs.