'I was in the south of France recently and visited the chateau at Pau where Henri IV was born. They supposedly used a tortoise shell as his cradle and the whole castle has become a memorial to that monarch who famously said: ‘Paris is worth a mass’, having renounced his Protestant faith for the French throne. We were on a guided tour, and to be honest, I was not that interested in the shell, the King, the gold frames and mirrors. What did draw my attention was… a big table. I think it was one of the biggest tables I had ever seen! Apparently, it could seat one hundred guests and I started imagining the noise, the food, and all the table talk that would have taken place around it...'
Read the blog in full on the New Welsh Review website
Shortlisted for the New Welsh Reader University of South Wales Travel Writing Award
'This is a beautiful, wise, and moving book. Munday understands that a life well lived is all about yearning, reaching – physically, spiritually, emotionally. It is about never settling for the mediocre; about always rejecting the phrase " that will do".' – Niall Griffiths
'Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.' – John Muir
'Engaging, upbeat, restorative.' – Gwen Davies
Seven Days is a story of adventure and spirituality as father and son travel the “Rue du Bonjour” across the pilgrim route of the high Pyrenees.
It is a journey with a writer grappling with some of the questions of modern life, his love for the mountains, his beliefs and aspirations and examples set both by his father and the enigmatic fellow traveller they meet in a remote auberge who comes to symbolise and shadow their sojourn, a man he nicknames Hemingway, although he is neither a writer nor an American.
A wonderfully engaging work of travel, discovery, and contemplation by an exciting new voice.
Nathan Munday originally comes from a small village in Carmarthenshire but he now lives near the Gabalfa Interchange where he has surrounded himself with lots of books. Doing a Ph.D. means that he has to escape to the mountains at least once, or maybe twice, a year. He won the M. Wynn Thomas New Scholars Prize (2016) and came second in the New Welsh Writing Awards (2016). This is his first book.
