Excerpt from the book:

Yellow arrows, red-and-white horizontal slashes painted on trees or wooden signposts, stone cairns, roadside crosses, and an outdated guidebook were what I used to navigate the Camino de Santiago. If any of those failed, I knew I only had to go in the direction of the setting sun since the road runs from east to west across northern Spain to the tomb of St. James at Compostela.

The pilgrimage route known as the The Camino Francés consists of four major roads beginning in France (at Paris, Vezelay, Le Puy, and Arles). These roads converge at the northern Spanish border of the Pyrenees. On the Spanish side of the Pyrenees mountains, the 800-kilometer trail is more commonly referred to as the Camino de Santiago. The route often follows old Roman roads over hills, valleys, plains, and mountains. The road takes the traveler through medieval villages and modern cities, through a variety of geological regions and climates, across northern Spain to Galicia, the northwestern province where the town of Santiago de Compostela is located.