Book Review: Miam Miam Dodo for the C.F.

[MichaelC]

The Miam Miam Dodo series are the most common guides for walking the caminos in France. I ended up using it in Spain too. I liked it, with a few reservations.

The very good: I liked how the maps showed what resources were available in different stops (i.e., water fountains, bars, atms, pharmacies, how many albergues, etc), and I really liked that it wasn't broken up into suggested stages. It made it much easier to plan my own walk each day. It was also easy to visualize the various alternate routes, as shown above.

The not so good: I wish the book had better maps for towns. There was no cultural information, unlike the MMD books for France. I also missed the elevation maps that the MMD had for the Le Puy route. I ended up supplementing this with the profile map that that they gave out at the SJPP information center.

Mixed: I looked at the Brierely guide, and thought that the 'personal reflections' and recommended spiritual thoughts for the day were really irritating. There was none of that in MMD. But: I also know that a lot of people really liked this about the Brierely guide. The neutral approach of MMD could be a pro or a con, depending on your perspective.

There also seemed to be things on the Camino that everyone knew about but me - like a cowboy bar, or a place with singing nuns. I guess those were in Brierley?

In the end, I'm glad I brought this one, but I'd only give it a soft recommendation. It wasn't perfect, and wasn't quite the same quality as the MMD for the Le Puy route. But it was also a nice complement to the more mainstream English guides. It was fun to compare them when I walked with people who had Brierley.

 

[Robo]

I really like Miam Miam Dodo. I carry it scanned on my phone along with the Brierley guide.

The ONLY thing I don't like is the maps. Maybe these have been improved by the colours and shading on my 2015 version make it very hard to read..... for me at least.

Oh and the Brierley guide. The new version is smaller. With smaller text!
I can only read it in very strong light ............

 

[Prentiss Riddle]

Thanks for this. How much trouble could a person get into if they didn’t know French but were pretty good at spotting cognates? “Ouv” means “egg”, right? So many eggs on the Camino!

By the way, most of the “very good” features you name are true of the Dintaman & Landis guide, my personal favorite. They do break the way into stages but it’s easy to ignore them.

Doesn’t Miam Miam mean “yummy”? Is the MMD better at food recommendations?