Camino de Santiago

The Camino de Santiago is actually not one trail, but dozens, leading across Europe and converging on the Christian pilgrimage site, the stunning Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Northern Spain.

Within Spain, there are a dozen official routes, the most-walked of which, The Camino Frances, covers some 780km from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, near Biarritz, France, to the shrine. Though it reached the height of its popularity between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, archaeology shows that there has been a pilgrimage route here from prehistory, and the Roman trade route to the Atlantic, the via Lactea, also followed, roughly, the Camino Frances. Its religious use had all-but died out by the 1980s, and was, ironically, revived by the paths increasing popularity with leisure walkers, now hosting some thousands of pilgrims each year once more.

Being so long and so varied, this is a hard route to sum up, except in terms of its extraordinary historical significance. Its many branches, well-marked with bright yellow arrows and scallop shell motifs, afford experience of everything Northern Spain has to offer, from great historic cities, through wild mountain landscapes, the hot central plain, the delightful wine country of the Rioja, bucolic farming idylls, rough coastal paths and small-town treasures, to the blowsy, elegant faade of the reputed burial-place of St James, who, almost single-handedly, apparently, drove the Moors from Spain several centuries after his death.

See our dedicated pages for the main routes, which include:

•  The Camino Frances.

•  The Camino del Norte, which follows the northern coast, north of the stunning Picos de Europa.

•  The Via de la Plata, the ancient route northward through Spain.

•  The Via Jacobi (the route through Switzerland).

• The Camino Portuges (starts in Portugal) 

Other routes, which we plan to write up over time, include:

•  The Camino Finisterre: after visiting Santiago de Compostela, many pilgrims then take the opportunity to do the three-day walk, via Negreira and Olveiroa on to Finisterre which, as it name suggests, was widely thought to be the end of the world in ancient cultures (though in fact Portugal boasts Europes most westerly promontory). This is a lovely, green, 81km walk, far less populous than the Camino Frances, but refugios are rather inadequately placed, meaning that it has to be divided into one easy, flattish day of 21km and two quite punishing, more uphill, days of 30km. Being easily accessed by bus, Finisterre itself is quite crowded but its great western sunsets are justifiably famous.

Map of the Ways of St James in Europe

Source: Manfred Zentgraf, Volkach, Germany; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported at Wikipedia.org.