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Product Description Updated and expanded October 2019. Camino Easy is a stress-free mature (over 50) walker's guide to the Camino de Santiago with focus on a 1 or 2-week adventure on the French Way or the Portuguese Way. This is a "starter kit" and handbook for planning your Camino adventure with an emphasis on keeping it simple and stress-free. Please note that this is NOT a detailed guide to the Camino, not by a long shot. There are other excellent guides which provide a high level of detail for every section, route, and village. Camino Easy's goal is to help individuals who have not taken this sort of trek in the past and have a number of fundamental issues and concerns. When hiking the Camino for the first time, the author found that the detailed guidebooks were wonderful once the trip had started, but these books often lacked the basic guidance needed in planning the walk for the first time.- DO consider acquiring Camino Easy if you are walking some or all of the French Way or the Portuguese Way for the first time, are a mature individual, and are curious about the options available to you. DO NOT purchase this book if you have hiked the Camino previously or have taken other similar hikes as this book will not provide additional help.- Most Camino guides strive to provide comprehensive details on every aspect, Camino Easy focuses on what you really need for your first Camino. This is a straight-forward guide to when to go, where to hike, what to take, and what supporting services to work with. The book's mantra and goal for you are "Have fun. Have an adventure. Don't kill yourself." Review So, I'm a mature walker. In fact I came off a heart surgery this spring. And suddenly I found it tough to enjoy my hiking passion to its fullest extent. I had planned to walk the lightly traveled Oregon Coast Trail this summer but as I tried to plan my heart just wasn't in it. My priest mentioned she had hiked a Camino years ago and suddenly I decided I needed to try it. This was the first book I read on the topic. So what can I say about the book? It is not a detailed route guide. It does not give a map or list the potential alburges (hiker hostels) or good restaurants in each town. What it does, and does very well, is reassure those of us feeling a bit insecure, that the Camino is a pilgrimage you can, and should, do. And there are many options for doing it. Unlike some guidebooks which assume you will want to average 25km ( roughly 15.6 miles) per day, all the author assumes is that you want to walk, experience something new, and he provides options for doing so. Will a shorter Camino suit you better? Maybe, and as far as the Pilgrim office is concerned, if you walk 100 km, you've walked a Camino. How much do you want to carry? Is a transport service appropriate for you? Where can you find medical care? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a tour company? All these questions and more are considered and for mature or disabled travelers all are relevant. Of course there are hiking purists who insist that anything less than a full (800km/500mi) Camino is not a true pilgrimage and if you use a luggage service or tour agency you are cheating. They are wrong, as the author repeatedly assures us. (There are wilderness purists who insist a Camino is not a real hike because you regularly encounter towns along the way and can resupply easily. They are also wrong.). A Camino is a pilgrimage and an intensely personal experience. There are as many ways to do it as there are people attempting it, which is now in the hundreds of thousands a year. Older hikers and those with health issues have different considerations when planning than younger fit hikers. I used to be the latter. Now I I've joined the former. So, while this is not a stand alone book (you will still need a town guide, map or good app, etc) it is a useful presentation of alternatives for non traditional hikers. I'm glad I found it. This book reassured me that even with