Sandy Brown Reverend

Sanford ‘Sandy’ Brown is one of the most prolific and trusted pilgrimage guidebook authors in the world. After reading ‘The Pilgrimage’, by Paolo Coelho in 1992, he planned his 2008 trek on the Camino de Santiago and since then has walked and biked over 14,000 kilometres on pilgrim trails in Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy and the U.S. He records his pilgrim adventures in his popular blog, www.caminoist.org and his YouTube channel www.YouTube.com/sandybrown, and he organizes pilgrim treks through his family’s travel business, www.pilgrimpaths.com. His guidebooks through Cicerone Press span thousands of kilometers of pilgrim trails, including the Camino de Santiago, the Via Francigena, the Via di Francesco and the California Missions Trail. In 2020, Cicerone Press named him Associate Publisher for Caminos and Pilgrimages. Sandy earned his undergraduate degree in medieval history at the University of Washington in Seattle, his MDiv at Garrett Theological Seminary, which honoured him in 2006 as Distinguished Alumnus, and in 1997 earned a doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary in gender, sexuality and spirituality. He is an ordained, United Methodist minister and has served as executive director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle and as senior pastor of Seattle’s historic First United Methodist Church. In his spare time, he enjoys yoga, sailing, piano, and planning his next pilgrimage walk. He has two grown sons and lives with his wife, Theresa Elliott, on the Via Francigena in Lucca, Italy.