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Bethan Davies has been thinking up ways to travel for free since she's been responsible for buying her own plane tickets.

She's been dreaming of Spain every since her first glass of Rioja, and is now marked out as a lunatic supporter of the Spanish national football team (especially Raúl) in bars along the camino. A package holiday to the Algarve left few scars, and she decided to see what the rest of Portugal had to offer in 1993. This time, she loved what she found, and the food, mountains, and the people she met drew her back to research the second edition of Walking in Portugal. A librarian and former editor, Bethan lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she eats well at the city's Portuguese bakeries and Spanish restaurants.

Ben Cole has worked in travel bookshops for longer than he cares to remember, after gaining a degree in archaeology and ancient history. Ben was first introduced to corn bread and pasteis de nata by Portuguese friends in his native Toronto. He fell in love with Iberia in 1993 while exploring the mountains of Portugal, and a chance encounter with the camino a few years later led to a fascination with the camino francés. He lives in Vancouver, and finds it hard to start the day without a café solo, grande.