Camino Chronicle

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Susan Alcorn's Camino Chronicle: Walking to Santiago is a travel and cultural narrative/guide that weaves together the background information – the history and the cultural setting – of Spain with the modern experience of hiking the Camino de Santiago or Way of St. James. In September 2001, the author and her husband Ralph set out to walk across northern Spain on this ancient trail.

They begin a journey of five hundred miles as they set out from Roncesvalles, a small village in the Pyrenees; travel through the rolling hills of Navarre and La Rioja covered with grapes; deal with the happenings of 9/11, hike across the meseta (described as "nine months of winter, and three months of Hell"); travel over the Cantabrian Mountains; and enter the green, wet ridges and valleys of Galicia.

There they reach their final destination, the holy city of Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of the disciple St. James are buried. In so doing, they have followed in the footsteps of such historic figures as Charlemagne, St. Francis of Assisi, Dante, Chaucer, and King Fernando and Queen Isabel as well as millions of lesser-known pilgrims.

The book covers the practical aspects of walking the Camino, planning, food, shelter, local history in the course of relating the author's story.