1984 Camino Guidebook!

[rappahannock_rev]

Found in a secondhand bookshop in Jaca. On the reverse of the title page it says Texto y mapas: Elias Valina Sampedro y equipo....... Covers first the Aragones, then the Frances. Maps a bit crude. Interesting to see how many changes have been made in the two routes since 1984! More changes than I would have expected - but most of them fairly minor....

5 Euros. Like new. Bought it, of course, but the shop had several other copies....

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[Bradypus]

That is the guide I used for my first Camino. Borrowed my mother-in-law's copy which she had autographed by Don Elias on her own Camino in 1985. Sadly I had to give that copy back and buy myself a new one.

 

[rappahannock_rev]

That is the guide I used for my first Camino. Borrowed my mother-in-law's copy which she had autographed by Don Elias on her own Camino in 1985. Sadly I had to give that copy back and buy myself a new one.

I'd gladly have paid more than 5 Euros for an autographed copy!

 

[Bradypus]

I'd gladly have paid more than 5 Euros for an autographed copy!

Probably my only real regret about my first Camino is the timing. I walked in summer 1990. Sadly Don Elias died in December 1989 - only a few months before my walk. It would have been a privilege to have met the man who more than any other is responsible for the revival of the Caminos, and by extension the wider interest in pilgrimage in recent years in many other places.

 

[wayan]

An English edition from 1992.

 

[Bala]

I've also got a copy of the 1992 English edition, found on Amazon a few years ago. Wonderful history, beautiful maps, fascinating photos, and a lot of timeless information, still valid for any modern-day pilgrim interested in doing more than just putting one foot in front of another.

I love it not just for its historical record, but because it's now also an historical record in its own right, showing a world radically changed in 25 years, yet in many ways still so very much the same.

And besides, where else will you find the family trees of both the Hapsburg and Bourbon dynasties in the back of a guidebook!

 

[David Tallan]

That's the same one as I used for my first camino in 1989, although mine wasn't spiral bound but with regular book binding. I think I would have preferred the spiral binding, though. I saw on a friend's shelf another English language guide book from 1990 recently, different author and publisher. Of course, I had to get me one of those, too. I wonder what was the earliest English language guide to the Camino (or earliest in the 20th century).