New Camino Film Debuts

A new documentary about one man’s experiences walking the Ruta Francesa, the traditional trail across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela will be released 28 October 2008.  Mark Shea made the trip, hauling his own camera gear to record his journey, in The Way. Read the rest of this entry »

Stretch a Leg in Luxembourg

The Independent recently provided a nice, concise introduction and update about “Europe’s smallest big country”, Luxembourg, including a mention of its diverse web of hiking trails, many of which connect to other Grandes Randonneés winding across the continent.  Read more >>>

France on Foot

One of my favorite books about walking in France is France on Foot: Village to Village, Hotel to Hotel: How to Walk the French Trail System on Your Own. Bruce LeFavour, a professional chef with a penchant for get-away hiking with fine food and wine at the end of each day’s trail, describes his years of hiking the French Grandes Randonnées, his thorough planning, and how he creates his own custom guidebooks.   He makes it sound easy and fun, and this is the book that helped push me to take my first long-distance steps.

Published in 1999, this book predates much of the recent developments in ultralight gear and technique, and his gear list may seem a bit “vintage” by today’s standards, but one of my favorite things about France on Foot is how LeFavour intentionally designed the book to be too big to take along. A Highly recommended, valuable planning resource for all longwalkers ad lightweight travelers.

Scott Smith Walking the Wild Side

Writing in the Pueblo Cheiftain, Scott Smith describes an idyllic dayhike in Wyoming’s Jedediah Smith Wilderness, climbing the trail to Table Mountain.

Tar Heels Hike the Mountains-to-Sea Trail

A nice update from Asheville’s Citizen-Times on the “work-in-progress” Mountains-to-Sea Trail that runs a thousand miles across North Carolina from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Outer Banks.

Solo Woman on the Santiago Way

Rick Lemyre has a brief account in the Brentwood Press about Alexis Easton, a California woman who discovered many things about herself as she walked the final stretch of the Camino de Santiago.  And it’s nice to hear that many of the Spanish albuerges (pilgrim hostels) are still only $5 a night!  And she voices one more kudo for a pair of recent (2007) Camino guides – Arthur Paul Boers’ The Way Is Made by Walking, and A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago, by John Brierley.  Both are highly recommended.

Thirty Years… 30,000 Miles…

Here’s a little pedestrian motivation from Bill and Neddy Orme of Sydney, Australia.  They were hard-charging forty-something professionals before they made their first walk.  John Huxley recounts how it changed their lives in this article from the Sydney Morning Herald.  One of their three key inspirations was Hilaire Belloc’s classic tale of his pilgrimage walk through France and Italy, The Path to Rome.