Santiago has been a pilgrimage site for more than 1100 years, since the interred remains of St James – one of Christ’s disciples – were supposedly located in this most unlikely resting place. The pilgrimage, often referred to as the Camino de Santiago (Way of St James), reached its height in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries before declining to the point where, by the middle of the twentieth century, it was remembered as little more than a medieval curiosity. Since the 1980s, however, the Santiago pilgrimage has experienced an impressive and sustained revival. Whereas medieval pilgrims traipsed to Santiago in the hope of receiving redemption for their sins, the motives of the modern pilgrims are various and complex. With the Camino now firmly established as one of Europe’s great ‘walks’, pilgrims and tourists alike flock towards Santiago, and their reasons for doing so are as likely to be secular as they are religious.

Where travellers go, travel writers soon follow. The boom in pilgrim traffic has been matched by a torrent of books recounting an essentially medieval experience – long-distance walking – undertaken by men and women whose lives have hitherto been shaped by the comforts of modernity. There have been numerous Australians among these pilgrim–authors, with more than a dozen Australian accounts of the pilgrimage available. A number of these titles have emanated from small presses and received limited distribution, but in recent years the inevitable commodification of the pilgrimage has been reflected in the interest shown by major publishers. Australian Santiago narratives from larger publishing houses include Tony Kevin’s Walking the Camino (2007); Elizabeth Best and Colin Bowles’s The Year We Seized the Day (2007); and Tom Trumble’s Unholy Pilgrims (2011).

Such is the commodification of the Santiago pilgrimage that the associated publishing has now moved to the next stage of commercial ambition, the coffee-table book. The first Australian title of this type was Kim and Malcolm Wells’s Camino Footsteps (2008). Now we have Dee Nolan’s A Food Lover’s Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. As the title indicates, Nolan has tweaked the Santiago genre by adding a foodie’s perspective – not an unexpected development. Slow travel and slow food are natural partners. Not only has the Santiago pilgrimage emerged as an iconic slow-travel experience, but the major routes cross two countries beloved by slow-foodies, France and Spain.

In the crowded marketplace of coffee-table gastro-porn, A Food Lover’s Pilgrimage is a heavyweight. At more than two and a half kilos, this is not a book to be taken lightly. The bulk speaks in part of the high production values. This is a large-scale volume, with weighty end-boards, quality paper, and superior design. 

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the most popular starting point for a pilgrimage from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela  

Nolan’s text skilfully treads the path between travel and food. She knows enough about the history of Santiago, and the sociology of pilgrimage more generally, to pepper her narrative with interesting details for readers who are new to these subjects. She also weaves into her account just enough of her own back-story – returning to Australia from London after more than two decades to buy back the family farm in South Australia – and tales from her experience of walking to Santiago. In this latter regard, Nolan might be considered a disappointment by more ardent pilgrims, as her walk is limited to a comparatively short period of escorted travel. She stays in up-market paradors, rather than in the more agreeably authentic refugios.

On the food side, this is not primarily a book for cooks – there are only a handful of recipes. Rather, it recounts Nolan’s encounters with various slow-food experiences that dot the byways of the Camino. The links between the food and travel content are sometimes tenuous; little of the produce or food she so eagerly samples (including rice from the French Carmargue, wild salmon in the Pyrenees, white asparagus from Pamplona, Jurançon wines, Bayonne ham, wood-fired bread from a Basque farmhouse, and vegetables hand-picked from family gardens) has an obvious connection to the pilgrimage other than geographic proximity. In addition, Nolan is not averse to departing from the pilgrim routes in order to enjoy a culinary experience that takes her interest. The real connection between Nolan’s food and travel experience is based on a romantic and nostalgic attraction to pre-modernity. Just as she is drawn to the Santiago pilgrimage by its powerful association with the piety and faith of medieval Europeans, she also finds an affinity with traditions of food production that pre-date multinational agribusinesses aligned with global economies. As Nolan concludes of one encounter with traditional farmers, ‘Their link with the soil, with growing their own food, was an unbroken golden thread from as long ago as anyone can remember.’

Pilgrim narratives frequently culminate in some form of revelation, and Nolan conforms to this expectation of the genre. She draws lessons from her experiences that she relates to her Australian life, finding ‘sanity and spirituality’ in the act of walking, and deriving inspiration from the dedication to quality food and produce she finds on the Camino. Her conclusion is therefore optimistic: looking forward to a nation of healthier minds and bodies rediscovering the twin joys of physical exertion and heritage vegetables. It might be easy to be sceptical when the longing for a simplified golden age of pre-modernity is expressed in such an elaborately produced book that so obviously meets the desire for self-gratifying consumption, but there can be no denying the genuineness of Nolan’s appeal for a retreat to more localised and sustainable forms of food production.

As with most coffee-table titles, a considerable amount of the appeal of A Food Lover’s Pilgrimage depends on the pictorial content. Photographer Earl Carter (whose work has previously graced books by chefs David Thompson and Damien Pignolet) has produced a stunning collection. Carter is equally adept at landscape, architectural, portraits and food photography. For many readers it will be the photographs, not just the text, that justify the book’s substantial price.