Lyndon did a beautiful job of contrasting his personal experience of the trip with the wildlife and environment that he encountered. Reads like a personal journal or travel journal. Detailed explanation of plants found on the Camino

You know, I honestly thought the author was going to use his subtitle, "Lost in the Weeds Along the Camino de Santiago" as a metaphor for the people walking this ancient pilgrimage route. But that one seemed to have not survived the edit. He does think of the diet of the vultures circling above the Pyrenees as an emblem for all the dead meat we might wish to cull from our mental baggage, he equates a hardy chicory with that kind of person who can thrive in more arduous times, and more – we even get put into one of two categories of grape. Yes, this book has a lot more triteness and cheese than I'd ever expect, coming from a University Press. It also, despite the author's journalistic and broadcasting background, has an almost naive levity to it.

My response to this may be that I was not fully aware of what kind of book I was due for. Was it a field guide to all the flora alongside the Camino, was it one reportage of the six weeks' walking with copious diversions into the hedgerows to see what was what, or was it a light-hearted compilation of incidents in the hostels, with added comment about the plant life once out of doors? It certainly started out more of the latter, and I was only really happy with the floral abundance on later pages. He managed to give the flavour of both the botany and the walk a strong sense on the page, but only the sense I'd expect from a newspaper article, not an esteemed volume.

Other things to note, where the nature notes are, is that too many of the extended riffs may be about trees and not the plants, and eucalyptus are not that "highly regarded" as he makes out. This is also definitely written for a US-only market, with me only guessing scabious as a subject, for example, from the Latin name, and he gives many North American-only names to things (I know, I checked with my plant nursery staff mother). His Canadian origins mean he didn't recognise the sloe for what it was. Of note where the walking tour details are concerned, is the errant bluntness with which we both reach Santiago and finish the narrative. Not good.

I think the fan of walking holidays and reading about them, before or after ticking them off, will find this reasonable, but inessential. Likewise, as good as the response the author gives to seeing fields of autumn crocus, the flora fan will find this reasonable, but inessential. You would definitely have to be in the middle of the relevant Venn diagram to rate this highly.