Pilgrim Snail: Busking to Santiago Book

The impetus behind Ben Nimmo's mammoth walk from Canterbury to Santiago de Compostela in Spain as described in Pilgrim Snail was a sombre one: he wanted to pay tribute to the girl he loved, murdered while working for charity in Belize. But Nimmo's odyssey became a life-changing one, and reading about it is anything but a sombre experience. This fascinating record of his adventure conveys the peaks and troughs with maximum vividness. Nimmo's sole companion on his eventful trip was a trombone, and for the nine months (and 2,000 miles) of his journey he struggled against injuries, massive storms and even a phantom bear--all the time weighed down by his mammoth rucksack. But what makes Nimmo's picaresque narrative so diverting is the panoply of colourful characters he encounters: smugglers with courtly manners, monks who are rather too fond of the communion wine and even a hospitable anti-bloodsports neo-nazi with whom he shares a sandwich. Nimmo lays his head down in everything from ruined castles to bat-infested caves, and engages in such surrealistic pursuits as watching a chicken-worship ceremony in a Spanish cathedral and a game of boules played with square balls. All of this is conveyed in prose that veers from the caustically funny to the sharply evocative, and it's to be hoped that Nimmo picks up his trombone again if his travels make for such quirky and entrancing writing as this. --Barry ForshawRead More