pinecrumbs

About pinecrumbs

Pinecrumbs is an independent food atlas and editorial business for food on long-distance journeys. It brings together maps, guides, and stories about the food that supports people walking through a place.

Why pinecrumbs?

Every long-distance journey starts with a practical problem: what will I eat today? On a long route, that question gets asked every morning for months. The answers tend to be interesting. They reveal what the region produces, how it cooks, who eats what, and what the land makes possible.

Food along a long-distance route belongs to the life of the route. It supports the people walking through: what the region grows, what the inns cook, what the trail towns serve, and what the locals share when a stranger arrives hungry and tired.

Pinecrumbs follows long-distance routes through the food encountered along the way.

Why the Long Way?

Long-distance journeys create the time and repetition to notice what a place puts on a table. Walking from one town to the next means encountering the food that supports the route: what the region grows, what the inns cook, and what the trail towns serve. The next meal becomes part of the day’s geography.

Pilgrimage routes and long trails both pass through living food culture. Pinecrumbs follows them through the food encountered along the way.

Why Food?

The same route walked by two people can produce very different experiences depending on what they pay attention to. Paying attention to food means paying attention to the land, the seasons, the history of who settled where, and what survived. A bowl of udon in Kagawa is also a story about wheat cultivation, water quality, and a particular kind of dough. A plate of bacalhau in Porto is also a story about Atlantic cod fishing, salt preservation, and centuries of Portuguese maritime trade. You can eat both without knowing any of that. It is more interesting if you know some of it.

Brandon Shewmake

Brandon Shewmake has walked the Appalachian Trail end to end, the Shikoku Pilgrimage’s 88 temples, the Camino Portugués, the Kumano Kodo, the West Highland Way, the Affric Kintail Way, and the Cape Wrath Trail, among others. He is also a writer and software engineer. He grew up near the Gulf of Mexico, which is where his interest in food began.

Pinecrumbs started on the Appalachian Trail in 2017. The trail runs 2,190 miles through fourteen states, and for five months the most interesting question each morning was what there would be to eat at the other end. That preoccupation became a book. Seven years later, on the Shikoku Pilgrimage, the same question produced another book and a closer interest in what it means to walk through a food culture rather than visit it.

Having completed both a route of the Camino de Santiago (the Camino Portugués) and a route of the Kumano Kodo, the only two pilgrimage trails in the world to share a UNESCO World Heritage designation, Brandon holds the title of Dual Pilgrim, awarded by the World Heritage Kumano Kodo Certification Program.

The writing on this site comes from being there, on foot, for months at a time.

Routes

Brandon’s completed long-distance walks include:

• Appalachian Trail: 2,190 miles, Georgia to Maine (2017)
• Shikoku Pilgrimage: ~750 miles, 88 temples, Japan (2024)
• Camino Portugués: Portugal to Santiago de Compostela (2025) · Dual Pilgrim ↗
• Kumano Kodo: Nakahechi route, Wakayama, Japan (2026) · Dual Pilgrim ↗
• Scotland's Remotest Pint: West Highland Way, Affric Kintail Way, and Cape Wrath Trail (serialized: Walking to the Remotest Pint on the West Highland Way)

Writing

Brandon's separate writing is published at walkingtodinner.substack.com. It includes letters from the road, serialized adventure writing, and food stories. The live Pinecrumbs newsletter is at pinecrumbs.substack.com.