Outdoor Books
Pilgrimage Books
People have walked to holy places for as long as there have been holy places, and this shelf covers most of the ways to do it: the Camino de Santiago, the quieter routes of Italy, the old pilgrim paths of Britain, and the long walks of people who invented a pilgrimage of their own. A few of the books are guidebooks. Most are accounts by someone who set off with one reason and came back with another.
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If you are walking to Santiago
A guide to the route, and three very different accounts of walking it: a German celebrity's bestseller, a comic walk with a donkey, and a 63-year-old former diplomat on two of the other pilgrim trails across Spain.
If you want a pilgrimage nearer home
Four ways into Britain's pilgrim tradition: Phoebe Smith walking some of its oldest pilgrim paths, Oliver Smith retracing sacred journeys from the Ice Age to the present, Alistair Moffat's walk from the Borders to Lindisfarne, and a Bradt guide to ancient and modern sites that stir the soul.
If you want the long way round
Walks that went much further than Santiago: ten months from Canterbury to Jerusalem, London to Jerusalem in 2017 with a crowd of companions, 35 days along the Western Front Way, and pilgrimages in Spain, Japan and Ukraine by a young secular writer.
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The Way of St Francis: Via di Francesco : From Florence to Assisi and Rome
The route most people have not heard of: 518 kilometres from Florence to Rome through Tuscany and Umbria, in 27 stages of 11 to 29 kilometres, passing La Verna, Assisi, Gubbio and Spoleto. Cicerone's guide describes it north to south with maps, elevation profiles and downloadable GPX files, and pitches it as a quieter alternative to the Camino de Santiago.
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The full shelf
All books in Pilgrimage Books
35 books
