John Brierley obituary | Travel

John Brierley obituary

My friend John Brierley, who has died of cancer aged 75, was the author of bestselling guidebooks to the pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.

John believed that the Camino de Santiago experience could transform individuals for the better and that they in turn could transform our world. His guidebooks give walking directions and details of accommodation, and provide inspiration for what he called “the internal, spiritual journey”. The books were written from his own experience that walking long distances on pilgrimage could be a time for personal reflection, renewal and change.

The second youngest of four children of Martin Brierley, managing director for a car manufacturer, and Betty (nee Martin), John was born in Wolverhampton, although his family subsequently moved to Ireland, where he was educated at St Columba’s college, Dublin. He qualified as a chartered surveyor, and set up in practice as Brierley & Co. In 1977 he married Jill Hollwey, with whom he had a son and two daughters.

By his late 30s he was to all appearances successful. However, increasingly he felt that his life lacked meaning and that he had to change. The family home was sold to fund a travelling adventure in a camper van. During this trip he discovered pilgrims walking from France to Santiago de Compostela where, it is said, the tomb of the apostle Saint James lies.

He was deeply attracted to the concept of pilgrimage and decided to walk the Camino to Santiago, but first he had other changes to make to his life. He resigned from his firm, then he and his family moved to live in the Findhorn spiritual community in Moray, in the north of Scotland.

Two years later his ambition to walk from the small French town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port across the Pyrenees, and onward to Santiago, was fulfilled. This proved a life-changing experience.

However, he had found little information about it, and was inspired by the idea that he should write a guidebook. His first guide to that very route from France, known as the Camino Francés, was published in 2003. It proved to be hugely successful, and other guidebooks to the Camino routes from Portugal and beyond soon followed.

I first met John when I interviewed him for a pilgrim publication in 2010. By that time his books had sold 40,000 copies in seven years. Now, 1m copies have been published in several languages. John wanted to share his success with his beloved Camino, and made generous donations to many pilgrim causes – the Confraternity of Saint James in the UK; the pilgrim albergue (hostel) in Rabanal del Camino, Spain, to buy new beds; the albergue in Alpriate, Portugal, to repair the roof; and many more.

Latterly John was seized with the idea of developing the Camino Portugués, from Lisbon to Santiago, to create a viable long-distance walking route as an alternative to the increasingly busy Camino Francés. In the weeks before he died he presided over the formation of a collaboration between pilgrim associations across the world to achieve this, and provided a significant donation to establish the project.

In recent years his daughter Gemma became involved in producing the guidebooks.

John is survived by his wife and children, Benjamin, Georgina and Gemma, and his three sisters.

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