I’ve just completed a very substantial round of updates for the upcoming reprint of the Camino del Norte and Camino Primitivo guidebook for Cicerone.
Before jumping into the weeds, a quick semantic note. Cicerone distinguishes between reprints and new editions as follows: a reprint is a new printing of the established book, complete with updated details, while a new edition is a complete overhaul, often featuring a new cover, updated maps and photos, and potentially significant layout changes. The date of the new edition is usually what stands out when people are doing a quick skim of books on Amazon, so this can be confusing, as many years pass between new editions. However, we’ve been able to keep rolling out new reprints every 12-18 months, so the book has remained fairly up-to-date throughout its now lengthy run.
There are two main reasons that the updates are so extensive this time. First, I’ve had the chance over the last 9-10 months to rewalk just about everything, both on the Norte/Primitivo and also the Inglés/Mar (still hoping for a reprint of that one at some point!). It’s always helpful to have boots on the ground. Second, and more importantly, it has taken a while for everything to shake out from COVID. There were a lot of albergues that were “temporarily closed” coming out of the pandemic, but as the months and years have now passed, that “temporarily” has become “permanent.” It’s hard in a book, where updates are only going to happen every 12-18 months, to cut something that might be coming back–especially when the ongoing existence of that place might be a shaky proposition. Getting cut from guidebooks can undercut business.
In any case, conditions are clearer for now, and that has made it easier to move forward with those significant updates. Here are the relevant resources to have on hand if you would like to individually update an earlier printing:
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- Full text revision document, organized by page. There’s a ton of detail here, most of it involving small shifts in accommodation costs, but there are some important route changes as well
- Norte and Primitivo accommodation spreadsheets. These are always getting refined, and many of the listings have been recently updated by the hosts for 2024
- Updated maps, organized by page. This includes route changes, new variants, and the removal of some closed accommodations
- Updated gpx tracks for all routes in the book
It’ll take some time for all of these edits to show up in the newly reprinted edition, so take note if you’ll be hitting the trail over the next few months. And please share any further updates with me as you encounter them, so that I can keep these up-to-the-moment for current and future pilgrims.
