In The Footsteps of Smugglers: My Life on a Basque Mountain

After eight years living in Copenhagen, an English journalist, driven by a passion for languages and mountains, finally rebels. With little more than an assortment of Earl Grey teabags, Danish candles and a map, Georgina Howard abandons her all-too-cosy, cinnamon-scented lifestyle and drives south. The journey leads to wild and craggy landscapes in the Basque Pyrenees on the French/Spanish border, where place names are written in a bizarre, foreign tongue full of 'x's and 'z's. Losing her heart to this beautiful land and her pride to the inscrutability of the language, Howard moves into an isolated barn in a mountain hamlet. While pagan festivals reverberate through the valleys, her Basque neighbours - farmers, shepherds, a gravedigger and a champion female lumberjack - observe her, bemused. Only when her daughter, Marion, is born - after an unsuccessful relationship with an eccentric Basque miller - do Howard's neighbours drop their reserve and welcome her into their homes.