The Scots Way to Santiago is an account by Spanish-speaking Scot, Patrick Farnon of an over 2,000 km walk through Spain in 2015 looking for links between Spain and Scotland. The Holy Book of St James, the first travel book, written in the 12th century for pilgrims was stolen from Santiago Cathedral the year before. Reading it, he discovered to his great surprise - and Scotland's shame- that Sleazeball Spaniards were Scots. They'd been sent to Spain by Julius Ceasar and as Navarrans had worn the kilt. Cautionary French Medieval tales of Sunday the Wolf, a member of the Coquillard (St James shell) gang, specialized in robbing pilgrims, helped sober up companion and - rabid fellow-Scot - Seamus Muldoon. As did the Spanish tale of the Wolf that Hanged himself. After Santiago, we continue down the Fisterra Way, the end of the world for the Roman invaders who arrived on the Coast of Death in 137 BC to subdue the Celtic tribes, where The Legend of the Stone Boat arose centuries later, telling of how a great stone boat, piloted by two angels, with the Virgin Mary on Board came to bring the body of St James back to Jerusalem. Continuing back along the Northern Way to the French border, to the Basque country where The Balls of the Antichrist - the label on a box of cookies - turns out to have come from an insult by an abbot who accused a bishop of heresy. All in all, a total of nearly fifty tales inspired by chance discoveries, the joys of sleeping in fly-infested hostels beside snoring pilgrims with bandaged feet; encounters en route with strange humans, birds, beasts and insects, on a rollicking trek through the hinterland of Spain and back along the coast. We already have the French way (El Camino Frances), the Fisterra Way (El Camino de Fisterra), the English Way (El Camino Ingles), the Silver Way (La Via de La Plata from Seville), the Northern Way (El Camino del Norte, along the Cantabrian and Basque coasts) and the Portuguese Way. Now we have a Scots Way to Santiago, the amusing record of a personal odyssey across the shoulder of Spain looking for the links between Scots and Spaniards, that mixes the Medieval with the Modern to reveal all sorts of marvels and wonders as well as a few charlatans.
Patrick Farnon is also the author of
What McClafferty Did [The Chiang Kai-shek Gold Bond Scam and Other Crazy Stuff] 2019; and
Under Dali Skies [Madder than the Wind] 2019.
He was born in Hamilton, Scotland, studied French & Spanish
at Glasgow University and is a Member of
ALCS
(Authors Licensing and Collecting Society). His short stories have appeared in
Barcelona Ink, The New Edinburgh Review, Words, Trends, Stand Magazine, Scottish Short Stories (Collins), the Scotsman Magazine.
As a journalist he has written for Havana Times, Jakarta Post, The Scotsman, Holland Life, Vision magazine, the Economist Intelligence Unit etc. He is also a translator of Spanish and Dutch.
He lives in Amsterdam with his wife and daughter.
