Podcast: Talking Camino de Santiago with Bradley Chermside
Earlier this year, a newsletter called BookBub surfaced a memoir that I almost scrolled past in my inbox: Not From Round Here. It’s a comical account of relocating from the Spanish sunshine to the damp north of England during the COVID years. Two details stopped the thumb: the COVID-lockdown premise, and an author who had spent years as an expat in Spain before that move. Familiar territory, given my life split between Colorado and Spain over the past few years.
The book delivered—laughs, more than once, and enough British vocabulary to double as a phrasebook. Butties. Punter. Skip. Nowt. Sod all, which showed up often enough to feel load-bearing. Half one for 1:30. Northerners, it turns out, use while to mean until—a shop stays open eight while nine, not eight until nine—which took a full reread to parse correctly. By the time gone doolally turned up, keeping a running list felt necessary.
Then came a mind-blowing revelation: the British favor single quotation marks for dialogue and quotes, while Americans do the reverse. Never mind that it took me 50 pages to notice this little detail. Seeing an ordinary punctuation habit reflected back as a regional quirk rather than a universal law was oddly humbling.
Better yet, the author—Bradley Chermside—had already hiked the Camino de Santiago and written his first book, The Only Way Is West, about that very trip. Recommending Not From Round Here to a few American friends headed to England for the summer felt natural enough. So did following Brad on Instagram and leaving a note mentioning that I had hiked a Camino de Santiago too.
To both my surprise and delight, Brad wrote back. Not just a reply, but an invitation onto his own show, the Camino de Santiago Pilgrims’ Podcast, once he heard a fellow peregrino was on the other end of that message. Fitting a recording into his schedule took some doing—between an international bestselling memoir, a run of live shows as a singer and entertainer, and a side career in stand-up comedy, Brad qualifies as a busy man, and possibly one of the few podcast hosts anywhere who could plausibly open for himself.
The second week of July worked for both schedules, which meant recording from an apartment in Warsaw, Poland. It’s not exactly Camino territory—although I did see a concha (seashell) for the Warsaw Way of St. James route!—but the internet connection was solid and the apartment, being on the 13th floor, was as quiet as a library. The apartment had corner windows and a skyline view better suited to a magazine shoot than an audio recording, though the iPad Pro didn’t seem to mind the demotion.
An hour and a half disappeared fast. Ground covered included the ultralight packing list from that six-week trip through Spain, and how a few more years of hiking would trim it down even further—the laptop would stay home next time. Talk moved through the different Camino routes worth considering, the essential tips that make or break a pilgrimage, sun protection, and the parade of animals encountered somewhere along the trail. Cash and earplugs for the inevitable snorers made the highlight reel of practical advice.
Other ultra-endurance habits came up too, including the Tour Divide and the ill-fated 2025 attempt at London-Edinburgh-London, cut short partway through by Storm Floris. Somewhere in there, Coke and mini donuts came up as the definitive cure for bonking, floated with the total confidence of someone who, in the 2000s at least (not recently), had bonked more times than he can count and lived to refine his methods.
A video excerpt of the bonking cure was posted here:
A framed painting reading “ADVENTURE” happened to hang on the wall behind me during the recording. That was unplanned, unbought, and suspiciously well cast for a podcast about walking 1000 kilometers across Spain.
How to listen to the podcast
The full conversation is live now here:
- Spotify: Episode 103 of the Camino de Santiago Pilgrims’ Podcast,
for anyone curious about ultralight packing, essential Camino tips, or what walking that far tends to do to a person’s mind. It was enough material to fill an hour and 15 minutes without running dry, although if that is too long for you, there’s always the playback option of 2 or 3X speed.
