The Camino de Santiago is the cheapest long trip you can take in Western Europe, and one of the strangest and best. For roughly a month you walk west across northern Spain with a scallop shell on your pack, sleeping in pilgrim hostels, eating communal dinners with Koreans, Brazilians, Germans and retired Irish farmers, until one morning you crest a hill and the cathedral spires of Santiago appear.
The route and the rhythm
We joined the Camino Frances at Pamplona and walked the classic line west: Logrono, Burgos, Leon, Ponferrada, Sarria, Santiago. That is roughly 680 kilometres, and most people take 27 to 31 days at 20 to 27 kilometres a day. If you only have two weeks, walk Leon to Santiago; if you only have five days, start in Sarria, the minimum 100 kilometres needed to earn the Compostela certificate. Days settle into a rhythm fast: walking by 6.30 to beat the heat, coffee and tortilla at the first open bar, arriving at an albergue by early afternoon, then laundry, a shared meal, and sleep by 10.
What it costs in 2026
This is the miracle of the Camino. Municipal albergues charge 10 to 15 euros for a bunk, private ones 15 to 20. The pilgrim menu, three courses with wine and bread, runs 13 to 16 euros almost everywhere. Add breakfast and snacks and 35 to 40 euros a day covers everything. The pilgrim credential, the passport you stamp at every stop, costs a few euros from any Camino association or your first albergue. There are no park fees, no tickets, no transport costs. Your only real expense before Spain is decent broken-in trail shoes.
The stages that stay with you
La Rioja means walking through vineyards into Logrono, where Calle Laurel is wall-to-wall pintxo bars. Burgos has the finest Gothic cathedral in Spain. Then comes the meseta, the high empty wheat plateau between Burgos and Leon that some pilgrims skip by bus. Do not skip it. Two hundred kilometres of horizon, wind and your own head is where the Camino stops being a hike and becomes whatever it is going to be for you. After Leon the land buckles up again: the iron cross at Cruz de Ferro where walkers leave a stone carried from home, the flowered stone villages of the Bierzo around Ponferrada, and the steep green climb into Galicia at O Cebreiro, often in fog, always with cowbells somewhere below.
Feet, packs and albergue survival
Carry no more than eight kilos. Two walking outfits, one evening outfit, a silk liner, and a headlamp for 5 a.m. departures. Blisters end more Caminos than injuries do: tape hotspots the moment you feel them, air your feet at every stop, and never debut new shoes. Albergues fill by mid-afternoon between Sarria and Santiago in summer, so from Sarria onward either start walking very early or book private albergues a day ahead.
When to walk
May, June and September are ideal: long days, moderate heat, everything open. July and August bring crowds and 38-degree afternoons on the meseta. April and October are quieter and lovely but wet in Galicia. Whatever month you choose, the last morning is the same: you walk into Praza do Obradoiro, drop your pack on cobbles worn down by a thousand years of arrivals, and sit there watching other pilgrims stagger in, hugging strangers you have somehow known for a month.
