The new edition of the Way of Saint James Cyclist's Guide (researched and written during the Holy Year of 2004) provides an up-to-date description of this ever-popular 1570km cycle route from Le Puy in France to Santaigo de Compostela in Spain. By using roads with a good surface for touring cyclists, this guide attempts to follow the original pilgrimage route as closely as possible and offers the opportunity to visit every major church and shrine along the way with a few detours to outlying monasteries for good measure. The average distance on most days is only 50km, easily within the compass of the moderately fit. The guide includes routes from Santiago to Finisterre and Padron for those cyclists who want that, little 'extra', while several variants are mentioned to cater for the fit and not-so-fit pilgrim. There is a comprehensive kit list and an English-French-Spanish list of essential words for the journey, as well as details of accommodation in gites d'etape, chambres d'hote, hotels, refugios and hostals.

Author Biography

John Higginson has been a long-distance fell walker for many years. Having been a keen cyclist in his youth, he took up long-distance cycling in Europe a few years after he retired from the post of headmaster of a Cheshire primary school. He is now a writer and lecturer. He and his wife Andrea, who have also cycled both south-to-north and east-to-west across France and the length of the medieval pilgrimage route from Le Puy in France to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, spent more than a year researching the historical traditions and the geography of the Danube Cycle Way before embarking on the journey that is described in this book. John Higginson has also written The Way of St James - Le Puy to Santiago, a Cyclists' Guide (Cicerone, 1999).