A walker's guide to the Camino

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Product Description

This is a walker's guide to the 778km Pilgrim Road from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the foothills of the Pyrenees on the French side to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, and finally to the 'end of the earth' at Finisterre on the Galician coast. A companion volume by the same author, "The Way of St James" (Le Puy to the Pyrenees), describes the French section of the route through to the Pyrenees. As well as giving directions for walking the route, the book also provides information on places to visit along the way, the history of the pilgrimage and the availability of practical facilities such as shops, bars, restaurants and accommodation. Unlike existing guides (in any language) this one contains: details of the walker's continuation from Santiago to Finisterre (75km) and a comprehensive listing of St. James' and other pilgrim references along the way (as an Appendix). It also contains a list of suggestions for further reading, a glossary of geographical and other useful terms, and a series of sketch maps covering the entire route to help the user in planning his or her journey.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180429 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Alison Raju is a former teacher of French, German and Spanish to adults and the author of four pilgrim guides for walkers published by Cicerone Press: Way of St. James: Le Puy to the Pyrenees, (2nd edition 2003) Way of St. James: Pyrenees-Santiago-Finisterre (3rd edition 2003), Via de la Plata: Seville/Granada-Santiago (2nd edition 2005) and the Pilgrim Road to Nidaros (Oslo-Trondheim, 2001.) A walker's guide to the Via Francigena, the classic pilgrim road from Canterbury to Rome, is in preparation. A chance viewing of a television programme in the early 1970's lead to Alison's interest in the Pilgrim Road to Santiago, at that time barely known in Britain. A walker most of her life she had the opportunity to walk the 1000 mile camino from Le Puy-en-Velay to Santiago all in one go in 1990, a time which coincided, fortuitously, with Cicerone Press seeking an author to write an original guide in English to the Spanish section of the route. Since then Alison has walked and explored many of the pilgrim roads through Europe (France, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal) as well as those she has written about.

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Customer Reviews

Nearly all you need
Good book for carrying with you on the camino. Well written and easy to read. Misses though on listing all the Albergues along the way, and takes too much space giving directions that are not needed on the Camino.

More useful publications available
My partner and I used this guide while completing the camino in May 2007 and August 2008. The limitations of the guide were obvious last year but as it did contain some useful information, e.g. the distances between vilages we took it with us again this year supplemented by the Confraternity of St James 2008 acommodation guide. From observing other publications while we were there and also research on the net it seems as if there are a lot more useful guides out there. One crucial ommission relates to contour levels and hence level of difficulty and timings between vilages. The pilgrim office at St Jean Pied de Port gives out a useful sheet with this information which many people use. As the previous reviewer says too much space is used giving unnecessary route directions and the information about places to stay is hopelessly out of date. I also think that saying that the average person could complete the route comfortably in 4 or 5 weeks with days off at various places is misleading and could cause people to pack to much walking into their days resulting in injury.