Annabel Simms – Guidebook Author
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Annabel Simms was born in England, of Hungarian parentage. She has lived in Paris since 1991, when she arrived from London on a year’s sabbatical from her job as a college lecturer in English…and never left.
Her interest in the region around Paris dates from that first year, when she began to spend her Sundays exploring the nearest countryside accessible by train from Paris, while teaching English during the week.
Armed only with the Michelin green guide and the suburban train map, she gradually discovered small medieval towns and villages, country restaurants, hidden châteaux and museums, parks, forests, canals and rivers and worked out the most enjoyable ways of accessing them by train and on foot.
Finally, realizing that this gentle provincial world less than an hour from Paris by train was unknown to many Parisians, let alone foreign visitors, she decided to write a guide to it herself. She illustrated her selection of favorites from the scores of places she had discovered with her own photos and maps, based on her experience of visiting them on foot.
An Hour From Paris, her guide to 20 little-known daytrips around an hour from Paris by train, first appeared in 2002 and is in its third edition (2019). Half An Hour From Paris, ten more daytrips around half an hour from Paris by train, was first published in 2018. The enlarged updated second edition, 10 More Trips An Hour From Paris, in full color and containing 12 trips, was published in July 2023.
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