The idea of buying a guidebook for a pilgrimage may seem ridiculous but hear me out here. It may be one of the most important possessions you carry along the way.

Walking 780km is a big deal and carrying a little info along the way isn’t such a bad idea.

Camino guidebooks can be great for choosing albergues based on size and management, for surveying the maps of the inclinations and declinations ahead on the route and helping to decide where to stop and rest throughout the day and where to stop or the night.

Guidebooks can be very useful… If you use them well. But they can also add extra weight to a bag you will be carrying across a country.

I decided to use the John Brierley guidebook on my camino. I had done some googling and read good things.

John Brierley’s guide was perfect for me in many ways (even if the elevation maps do not necessarily correspond with the mountains some days and I cursed John for deceiving me. But regardless being 100% accurate, he warns you when there’s a mountain or a hill and if it happens to be a little steeper than he says you’ll still have to walk up it).

There are many factors that help to chose the right guidebook for each pilgrim including the distance of the recommended stages, the language of the book and, of course, the size and weight. Even though the accommodation information and restaurant recommendations were a bit lost on someone like me who lives a bit too much ‘in the moment’ at least I always had some reference of how many albergues and beds were waiting for me in the next town when I decided to walk a bit too late into the afternoon…

I met many pilgrims who used phone apps or just map-based guides who swore by them. I met some pilgrims who had photocopied the maps from a bigger guide to dispose of as they walked. I met some pilgrims who tore pages out of their guide book as they walked to save space and weight (which really just seemed like some literary sin). And I met the braver pilgrims who had so much faith in the yellow arrows marking the path that they didn’t carry a guidebook at all.

I must admit there are many elements of John Brierley’s Camino de Santiago guide that were lost on me (mainly the more spiritual writings and his own daily reflections that although interesting weren’t necessarily something I needed to be looking at whilst having my own reflections along with hearing my fellow pilgrims throughs first hand along the way.

But John helped me a lot. (Even if I ignored a lot of what he said…)