Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet Walking in Spain (2nd ed)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think some of the reviewers' comments below are probably correct but none of them are serious drawbacks. True, the maps in this guide are not EXTREMELY detailed, but if you want a really detailed topographical map, you can always get one. The actual trail descriptions in this book are painstakingly detailed -- it even gets tedious. So if you can't find every tree along your route marked on the maps here, just use your imagination a little and wing it.

"Walking in Spain" describes thirty or so of the best trails in Spain, highlighting trails in Mallorca, the Alpujarras Mountains of Andalusia, the area around Valencia, Castile's Sierra de Gredos and Sierra de Guadarrama, the Spanish Pyrenees, Galicia, and the Cordillera Cantábrica. Hikes vary from longer hauls like the 23-day Pyrenean traverse and the month-long Camino de Santiago to shorter 5- and 6-day hikes and walks you can do in less than a day.

I've used the guide to get some great ideas for an upcoming hiking trip to the Alpujarras Mountains and the Sierra Nevada and have found it extremely useful. It lists numerous places to stay, ranging from 30- and 40-euro "pensiones" to dirt-cheap hikers' "albergues". You're not going to find a list of every single cheap place to crash your head here (if you did, you would have a book twice as big as this one), but you won't find yourself stranded. There's also a bunch of affordable eating places listed in this book.

A plus for hikers who want to tackle all or part of the famous St. James pilgrimage route is that the guide's recommended day-to-day itinerary drops you off at the end of each day in towns where you can get food and water. A chart also shows the distance between each official "albergue" and the next.

This book comes up a little short on cultural information, but you can always take a look at Lonely Planet's general guide to Spain. Recommended. Five stars.

I walked the Camino in 2001, using the 36 pages of the 2nd edition guide, in conjuction with the Confraternity of St. James Camino Frances. I found a large amount of excellent info in the 36 pages, and have been recommending it on our Camino web page ever since. The refugios change so rapidly that you shouldn't rely just on one guide. When I saw the recent negative review from a 2003 pilgrim, I went out and bought the 3rd edition, to see if there were drastic changes. The changes were few, and were all improvements - a list of refugios at the beginning, bolder print on the maps, so they are easier to read, slight rewording of some of the text. The authors of the Camino segment are still Nancy Frey and Jose Placer. Nancy has a PhD from University of California, Berkeley, and has written a well respected book on the Camino: Pilgrim Stories. The two of them own the On Foot In Spain adventure company and personally lead walks on the Camino and other treks in Spain. The history in the Lonely Planet segment is authentic, though necessarily condensed. I stand by my original recommendation. In addition to these 37 pages, get the Confraternity Camino Frances guide, and get either Davies and Cole's guide or John Brierley's guide.

You will find some errors or changes needed in all of these guides, due to conditions changing on the trail, overlooked typos, etc. When you do, help future pilgrims by sending an email to the publication's website so that they can revise the next edition.

The book is generally up to the usual LP standard, with good coverage of transportation and lodging possibilities. The route description is, however, lacking: When navigating in fog or snow (especially in the Pyrenees), you need better information than what they give in order to follow the paths. Specifically, the guide doesn't warn you about places where you are likely to err and how to avoid that.

I recently completed walking the Camino de Santiago, (the last section of the book), and the maps and narratives were invaluable. Virtually every english speaking pilgrim on the road had a copy! The only criticism I would make is some of the recommended stages at 25-35 km are excessive for a senior citizen (56) like myself. After 10 days I had to slow down, but the information in the guide was still helpful.

I used this book to plan a loop-hike in Sierra de Grazalema in Andalucia. Luckily, the inn keeper informed us that the book had published the hike in reverse of the intended route, due to some sort of copyright issue.

If we would have followed the book's instructions, we would have had a more difficult hike, and might have gotten lost. The inn keeper said that many hikers have complained of getting lost after following this book, since all the arrows are pointing in the opposite direction, and the cairns aren't necessarily even visible from the route, if you follow the book. Once on the hike, we could see that he was correct. I found Lonely Planet's inclusion of this "backwards route" to be extremely unethical.

But the book is the reason I even ended up on this beautiful hike, and it has a lot of good information. I don't know if there is a better guide available. But I DO recommend verifying/checking your route with someone local and NOT relying solely on the book for planning your route.

My first-ever lonely planet guide, but it made me an instant convert. I've since bought a few other Lonely Planets and haven't been disappointed.

I can only comment on a small part of the walks (Torla to Bielsa), but the trail guide on that section was accurate and the getting there and away information probably saved us three or four days of waiting in the middle of nowhere. There's also a bunch of general infos and flora/fauna that turned out to be real useful.

This Guide lives up to "Lonely Planets" reputation as a publisher of well researched Travel guides. It's the only guide you really need to "Walk Spain Flat"!

All the basic info is provided, Maps, discriptions,and language in easy to read format {although now that I'm in my 60's the print/font seems smaller??}. For walking Spain the guide is a "must have" piece of equipment.

Already have the book, but i have a friend off to Spain and I want him to reap the benifits of this informative and helpful travel guide. If you like to be active while on holiday, this is the book to get.

We used this book and also the Lonely Planet Spain guide together for 2 walks in Galicia. In both cases (Spindrift 2 and Mt Pindo) the information was out of date. The maps were just detailed enough to give us false confidence and we were misdirected both times. The recommended menu selection in the recommended restaurant in Camelle was awful.

This is a poor buy. Suggest you use the Spain book and get local topographic maps.

I am walking the Camino de Santiago now and can only comment on the Lonely Planet in this context. Day after day I become more convinced that Lonely Planet's researchers have never been on the Camino. They make much of the albergues or refugios but all this information is printed on the back of pilgrims' credencial (price one euro not 25 cents as LP claim). All of the other places where one might stay are hardly mentioned if at all. Punte Reina is described as a one street village, absolutely wrong! The trail leaving the same town is totally mis-described and all the trail mythology plagiarised from other sources takes up space that might be given over to hard facts. Distances are frequently misleading because of sloppy language. A typical example, is something like ¨"start from the crossroads, you'll pass x, y and z and continue for 5 kms to reach a crossroads¨." So where does the 5 kms start, at the crossroads or is it x,y and z? Whichever you choose you'll be wrong, there's no consistency. It happens time after time. An iron bridge near Estella is described as wooden. All small errors you may say but it just piles up day after day. Do not waste money on this useless book. What you need to know is what awaits you at the end of each day when you struugle into the next place after 20 or 30 kms only to read more vague errors from this.