<html><div style='background-color:'><P>Having walked both the St. Jean and the Somport routes to Santiago, I strongly recommend the latter. It passes through much nicer scenery (though it does miss Pamplona which is my favorite city enroute), it avoids the hideous and not particularly attractive climb from St. Jean to Roncesvalles, and it gives a week of nearly solitary walking though fairly wild landscapes before meeting with the much larger numbers of pilgrims who have walked the popular Roncesvalles to Puente la Reina (Navarra) route for the remainder of the trek. Despite the small numbers of walkers, there are fine refugios between Somport and Puente la Reina (Navarra). If you are interested in my experiences walking both routes, I have posted daylogs at <A href="http://groups.msn.com/CaminoSantiago">http://groups.msn.com/CaminoSantiago</A> Go to the left hand column and click on documents.</P>
<P>There are some excellent guides published for the various routes of the Chemin (Sentier) de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle in France; we walked the LePuy to Conques stretch using awonderful book published by the Federation Francaise de la Randonnee Pedestre (sorry, this keyboard does not allow diacritical marks) 14, rue Riquet, 75019 Paris. Under the heading Topo-Guide the organization publishes a number of titles for almost all of the important walking routes in France (for the LePuy-Conques section of the Sentier de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle Camino there are 3 books, and the heading is GR-65). Most good bookshops in France sell at least a few of the titles.</P>
<P><BR>You can, by the way, begin walking at Cluny and join the Chemin shortly thereafter. I met a couple of French walkers and a Dutchman who started there, though Vezelay is a more usual starting point.</P>
<P>I apologize for sending this personal note to the entire list, but when I tried sending it to the address <A href="mailto:caminoaoakapple.net">caminoaoakapple.net</A> it was returned as undeliverable.</P>
<P>E. O. Pederson<BR>Seattle, WA</P>
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