The Only Way Is West

A Once in a Lifetime, 500 Mile Adventure Walking Spain’s Camino de Santiago

By: Bradley Chermside

Narrated by: Joel Daffurn

The international best seller.

What would you do if you're given a €20 note in Greece with an email address scribbled on it:

1. Spend it?
2. Slip the suspect counterfeit bill into an enemy’s birthday card?
3. Send an email, hoping it will lead to you finding everlasting love?

Brad, a hopeless romantic, chose the latter.

Two years later, his love life remains a disaster and his career is misfiring. As he’s about to walk Spain’s fabled Camino de Santiago to ponder some profound life changes, Brad receives a reply. Incredibly, it’s from a woman who lives on the 1000-year-old pilgrimage trail, far away from where the money first crossed his palm. She invites him to sleep..."on her house".

Hiking 900km on the Road to Santiago to a blind date with the mystery €20 woman, he meets fellow pilgrims and natives who make him believe more than ever in the kindness of the human spirit, befriends a Hungarian who speaks English in song titles and has his raison d’être revealed to him by a barefoot Mayan mystic. Will he meet his happily-ever-after along the way too?

Buy this pacy, laugh-out-loud travelogue to find out now...

• Best seller in the UK - Humorous essays, travelogues, and religious travel categories.
• Best seller in the USA - Sports essays, ecotourism, and literary travel.
• Best seller in Canada - Humorous essays and travelogues.
• Best seller in Australia - Humorous essays and travelogues.
• Best seller in India - Religious travel.

©2019 Bradley Chermside (P)2020 Bradley Chermside

Critic reviews

"An inspiring, touching, heartfelt and funny memoir that made me howl with laughter throughout. A wonderful read." (Kevin Hand, BBC London)

"This book would be a great read for anyone planning their own Camino, or for those who like adventure and travel memoirs written with honesty, emotion and humour." (French Village Diaries)

Hilarious and inviting

I was eating lunch with a co-worker who was telling me about her upcoming vacation where her and her husband were going to walk the Camino. She was looking for a book she had read years ago before her first trip that she said was hilarious (not this book). The book she was looking for is no longer in print. Anyway…I came across this one and found it to be super funny, well written, and I’m now intrigued about this experience and interested in walking the Camino myself.

Not applicable to old (the vast majority) of Pilgrims.

OK book. Well written in the structural sense. Good narration, Mediocre material. Did not hide the ball that he was basically a young, semi professional athlete. The major problem is that most Americans that walk the Camino are old. Impossible *for the average* oldster to walk 58 Kilometers in a day, sleep on the beach for 5 days, finish the Camino in 3 weeks,etc.
I have 1,000 miles (1,600 Km) on the Camino. Took it easy. Didn’t have any blisters. Never had to sleep outside. Never had to take a cold shower. Never saw aggressive dogs. Never was chocked with fumes or bad smells every 5 minutes. I never had injuries (age 62 to 66).
This book is like a guy purposely running a marathon in half the normal time, and then complaining about his injuries.
The tiny percentage of people that can run a marathon would get it; the average pilgrim, not so much…

Ok story but shallow on insights

I always love hearing about the Camino and there were some quite good bits here. There wasn’t much in terms of life lessons or insights though which is strange given that that is why most people do it (and is why I am planning it for 2026). In fact, whilst there are a couple of very late bits about being more accepting and not such an opinionated so and so, this comes in the midst of a lengthy, constant, tedious and frankly weirdly obsessive moaning and complaining about “plastic pilgrims”. Zero self awareness of this lack of understanding and tolerance. No suggestion that maybe these were school children on an outing or that, maybe, most people are not as fortunate as the author and are not able to simply take 5+ weeks off. No, just negative and cruel judgmental self centeredness. Finally, I am absolutely not a PC crazed lefty at all, but the way that he talks about almost every single female he met (looks, legs, clothing, cleavage, on and on, and that’s pretty much it) is pretty depressing. Unlike the author, I had an immediate bout of sympathy for all women pilgrims who I bet have to put up with losers like that every day. In fact, that is probably my biggest take away from the book, that when I go I need to make sure that I don’t unintentionally make anyone feel uncomfortable or objectified in any away. One point which maybe (maaaaybe) could have made that feeling worse is the cringeworthy narrator, who talks throughout as if he is telling a naughty juvenile school ground joke. I wish the author had narrated it himself, maybe then some of the more offensive stuff could have been taken another way.

Outstanding

I have read many Camino books. This book is, by far, one of the best.

Great Camino content

I love Bradley’s book. It is a very easy read and does a good job of providing a sense of what the Camino involves with interesting and entertaining anecdotes along the way. His descriptions of the the other pilgrims, he met along the way were quite vivid. He shared his own introspection in a way that was entertaining, and I found myself really hoping that he has found fulfillment in his life post Camino.