Reviews for On Foot to the End of the World: Walking the Way of St James

The average rating for On Foot to the End of the World: Walking the Way of St James based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-07-03 00:00:00 Robert Hill Freund and his wife walked the Camino years ago, before Shirley Maclaine published her book about it and long before the movie The Way.* They started in Le Puy, in late September: a longer, colder, and wetter walk than that of pilgrims who begin farther along the (a) route in the summer. I've read a lot of Camino memoirs by now and appreciated some of them more than others, and this one...well, I liked it until I didn't. It feels pretty low-stakes all the way through (Will they get rained on again? Will they ever run into Ursula?), but it's pleasantly witty: Today, on our second hiking day, we have succeeded in getting lost for the very first time. It is a bit of an achievement, since the paths are labelled very well with red and white themed marking.... So it really is idiot proof. Well, almost. (14) Outside it's raining even more than usual, which pleases us since two days ago Henri told us that: 'The rain that comes down today won't come down tomorrow.' (37) He prays a lot while he walks and because it makes him inattentive, he gets lost every few hundred metres. This seems to contradict the popular belief that prayer stops you from straying from the right path. (117-118) (Collecting stamps seems to be the most popular activity for pilgrims. One could almost think they are going on a rubber stamp search instead of a pilgrimage.) (126) A lot of that still rings true today'you would not believe how easily I got lost, even when there were arrows every ten feet; plenty of people lust over interesting stamps and so on. But...I lost interest. Freund gets a bit dramatic (screaming and weeping and so on at the weather and his various aches and pains; regularly giving the impression that the hostel appeared just as they were about to die from exhaustion and/or being rained on), and...well. This isn't a trip on foot to the end of the world. As he notes in a letter included at the end of the book (pages 188-189), they accepted 363 kilometers of rides. That's not a crime (and tons of people get rides, bus through the Meseta, etc.), but it's a little misleading. I could let it go'except, to add insult to injury, they took a bus to from Santiago to Finisterre, the 'end of the world'. Hmm. Anyway. Still a lot of fun. I got a kick out of the notes Ursula left in the books. I found their return letter to her at the end of the book a bit condescending, although I expect that's just my cranky interpretation. I ran into this one by accident (in the remainders section of Waterstones, about two days after I finished the Camino), and it was worth the read...which felt like a nice coincidence. *I haven't read/seen either of those, for what it's worth.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-05-15 00:00:00 Solomon Kapustin I was very pleased with this book. It is about the Way of St. James. I thought it would be very "holy" but it is much more about hiking and the journey which I think brought me to a reflective place in a less overt way. I didn't even know about these pilgrimages, which became popular LONG ago. I also got this book from my 83 year old church friend. He is very "holy" and I admire his faith...I was afraid at first to read this thinking it would be only about St. James...and I can only do so much of that. Try it!