Camino de Santiago
I've collected together some stuff about the camino here. I'm hoping you'll be absorbed for a while if you have the time. I'm afraid the photos may mean more to me than to you. After all, I took them. I was there at the time. But some of them seem beautiful for their own sake and others may ring a small bell in your memory if you've walked the path, or may even nudge you towards a commitment to do so. Who knows?
I suppose I am hoping the poetry will work whoever you are. This is the arrogance of the poet.
The great thing about the internet is basically that if you don't like it, you can close the window and find out what West Ham Utd are up to instead, or something.
All the best,
Philip Rush
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on this page (use your back button to return): Guidebooks available, with cryptic comments Music available, with fewer comments Advice from personal experience each item below will now open in a new window: 2007: Many pictures tell only half the story |
The Road to Santiago-The Pilgrim's Practical Guide by Millan Bravo Lozano
This is the key guide to the route. It combines maps and information with a fluent historical context. The new edition (2005) is small enough to find room in a rucksack and once again comes with a set of separate stage-length maps which are almost indispensable. The perfect guide.
The Confraternity of St James - to which English pilgrims apply for a pilgrimage 'credencial' - provides the second indispensable book, the The Camino Francés, 2008 by William Bisset. CSJ, London, 2008.
This small and essentially scruffy volume is essential for the pilgrim. Every nuance of the route, its refugios, its hostales and its bars are scrupulously listed and helpful mileages are provided. Some facts are wrong, but this simply adds to the fun. The opinionated sections provide amusement at the end of tiring days. Every English pilgrim needs a copy. Trust me.
The book which provides the most complete and readable account of the architecture of the camino and its attendant history is Edwin Mullins' The Pilgrimage to Santiago.
There are some other books which people say are guides to the camino. Beside these, though, they are also-rans.
Bettina Selby's book about cycling to Santiago is a good read. Though occasionally unsympathetic to the spiritual dimension of the camino which makes it worth doing in the first place, she makes insightful comments about the ways in which the camino helps a pilgrim to confront the mysteries of life. I found it a little hurried in places, probably because I am not a cyclist and everything takes me three times longer anyway. Pilgrim's Road: A Journey to Santiago De Compostela by Bettina Selby.
Everyone goes on about Cees Nooteboom. Bully for him. I find his book unbelievably dull. Some of this is explained by the fact that the book is not really a book at all but a series of essays: the lack of cohesion is telling. (I was expecting something more like W G Sebald.) His book is called Roads to Santiago: Detours and Riddles in the Land and History of Spain and isn't really about the pilgrimage at all.
In fact, the best way to understand the camino is through a work of fiction. After all, this is the function of fiction. So it's no surprise that David Lodge has come up with the goods in his marvellous novel, Therapy. At first glance, the camino plays only a small part in the book, but when it's read in entirety, the reader finds that the spiritual quality of the experience is achieved with some very effective and light touches. Essential reading before leaving.
Lodge made some preliminary sketches about the modern role of pilgrimage in his earlier novel, Paradise News. Such fun.
You will need your own notebook, of course.
You're loading up your iPod for the wonderful siesta with throbbing feet. What fits?
Pilgrimage is a CD by two likely-sounding lads, Simon Cloquet and Eric Calvi, featuring the voice of early music star Catherine Bott as well as Phil Manzanera on guitar. Very hard to obtain. Beautiful in a certain sort of way.
When you get to Galicia, it's bagpipes, bagpipes, bagpipes. Key figures here are Mercedes Peón, Susana Seivane and the bands Milladoiro and Berroguetto. Personally, I find Carlos Nuñez too middle-of-the-road, but maybe that's as it should be. He's on a record called Santiago by the Chieftains. Seems to be unavailable, though.
I think Josquin Desprez's music would be a wonderful accompaniment to the camino experience. He had really nothing to do with the camino per se, but something of its spirit is captured in this wonderful recording by The Hilliard Ensemble. Lots of the refugios play music like this to establish the mood of the thing. More relevant and in a similar vein is a recent recording by John Eliot Gardiner's choir. The year they performed this piece on the pilgrimage route, however, we simply could never catch up with them!
You might also want to get hold of Oliver Shroer's album of semi-improvised violin music, recorded in churches as he made his way along the pilgrimage route: he has a neat website about the whole endeavour. It's a wonderful project, with beautiful music, lovely audio clips and a lovely package. Inspirational.
Oliver passed away peacefully on Thursday July 3, 2008. "He left peacefully and pain-free, and with much grace."
I like Robert Fripp's meditative 'soundscapes' work: you can pay to download performances from Discipline Global Mobile.
Whenever you need to find your way,
simply go in the direction
signalled by the yellow arrows.Whenever you need to rest or sleep,
simply find an albergue, a refugio
or a hostal residencial.Whenever you need to eat or drink,
simply find a bar
or a restaurant.If you're worried,
carry you own food & water
or other sustenance.If you're worried,
carry a sleeping mat
and your own tent.If you're worried,
carry your own map
and a can of yellow paint.