Spanish Steps, by Tim Moore

"Don't come back all funny," Tim Moore's wife said as he set off on the mediaeval pilgrim way to Santiago de Compostela. "You know: saying grace at dinner and all that stuff." The fact that his travelling companion was a donkey had obviously started ringing alarm bells in her head. She may also have been worrying why a man who describes himself "a cop-out cynic" in possession of a "soul-ometer in need of recalibration" was undertaking a 500-mile religious endurance test across northern Spain in the footsteps of Christians from the ninth century onwards.

"Don't come back all funny," Tim Moore's wife said as he set off on the mediaeval pilgrim way to Santiago de Compostela. "You know: saying grace at dinner and all that stuff." The fact that his travelling companion was a donkey had obviously started ringing alarm bells in her head. She may also have been worrying why a man who describes himself "a cop-out cynic" in possession of a "soul-ometer in need of recalibration" was undertaking a 500-mile religious endurance test across northern Spain in the footsteps of Christians from the ninth century onwards.

The explanation appears to be that Moore was a talented travel writer in need of a subject. Santiago de Compostela - Saint James of the field of stars - took his fancy. He might just as easily have started in Galicia and taken the Laurie Lee trail. For the distinguishing religious element of Compostela Moore dismisses at the start as "arrant cobblers".

He has a liking for such laddish phrases. Plenty of soddings, wankers and "Jaime-come-latelies" litter the text. Perhaps he hopes this vocabulary will distinguish him from the Jan Morrises, Paul Therouxses and Bill Brysons. That, and his wit. He suffers from what novelist Kathy Lette calls quip-lash. Few sentences are complete without a pun. Some are good but, after 300 pages, the overall effect, I'm afraid, borders on the idiotic.

The endless stories about the donkey are irritating, but then I'm not an animal lover. Every budding comic needs a straight man and Moore finds his in his beast Shinto - his "braymate of the month". The name is well chosen, since it emphasises Moore's adolescent detachment from anything to do with the religion of Compostela.

There is, at a stretch, some substance to this book. There are good vignettes of others among the 61,000 travellers who tread the camino each year: people like Alan, the Canadian pastor who has lost his faith, or Mario and Maria, the Led Zeppelin-loving vets with a Ford Zephyr. Moore also recognises a change in himself during his 40 days on the road as he learns "to accept, even befriend, people I'd have previously dismissed with a cheap and ugly laugh".

Spanish Steps may be of use as a beginners' guide to donkey care, but in terms of its subject, in essence it's a joke in poor taste. "Cheap and ugly", to use the author's words. If you want to know about Compostela, try Jini Fiennnes's On Pilgrimage or read David Lodge's account of walking there.

Mrs Moore's fears have not been realised. Her husband arrived home just as funny as when he left. "Santiago is just the beginning of the pilgrimage," a fellow-traveller tells Moore. "The fuck it is," is all he can manage by way of response.

Peter Stanford's "Heaven: a traveller's guide" is published by HarperCollins