My neighbor, the traveling writer: meeting with Bernard Ollivier

Audio 48:30

Bernard Ollivier, 82, in his native Normandy where he put his suitcases. Raphaëlle Constant

By: Céline Develay Mazurelle

Apostle of slow travel, former French journalist and late travel writer, Bernard Ollivier created in 2000 the Seuil association, an association for the reintegration of young people in difficulty through walking and travel.

Publicity

Unrepentant walker, he is also the author of “Life begins at age 60”, “Walk and invent your life” or “The long walk”, a famous triptych on the Silk Road that he traveled on foot on over 12,000 kilometers and which won the Joseph Kessel Prize in 2001.

We have been crossing paths and works for a long time, but we had never met him before. If confinement may have had a merit, it may have been that of allowing us to get to know our neighbors better. This is what Raphaëlle Constant has done for us, who, in recent months, has confined herself a stone's throw from Bernard Ollivier. Once the containment was lifted, she went to meet her neighbor, the traveling writer ... who, from her vast garden, gives us her way of life, her look at the direction of the walk, the current crisis and the role of seniors in Western society.
A report by Raphaëlle Constant, with Xavier Gibert of RFI Labo.

Find out more  :
- On the Seuil association created by Bernard Ollivier, which allows young people on the run to cross the threshold of a society that rejects them
- On the Air (e) association, their last ecological project aiming to create places of life and fraternity in the form of small autonomous villages. A march for Tomorrow is normally planned this summer in Brittany.

Bibliographic selection  :

  • Long walk, continuation and end . Editions Phébus. 2016
  • Walk and invent your life . Arthaud editions. 2015
  • Adventures in Loire, 1000 km on foot and by canoe . Editions Phébus. 2009
  • Life begins at sixty . Editions Phébus. 2008
  • The long walk: On foot from the Mediterranean to China by the Silk Road (Volume 3): Wind of the steppes . Editions Phébus. 2003
  • The long walk: On foot from the Mediterranean to China by the Silk Road (Volume 2): Towards Samarcande . Editions Phébus. 2001
  • The long walk: On foot from the Mediterranean to China by the Silk Road (Volume 1): Cross the Anatolia . Editions Phébus. 2000.

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