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Walk the Camino Frances to Santiago

At Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port a man sells chestnut walking sticks from a folding table, and by noon the fog on the first Pyrenees climb swallows the waymarks whole. The Camino runs 780 kilometres to Santiago, through vineyards, then the flat meseta where nothing moves for hours, eucalyptus appearing only near the end. Each night a hospitalero stamps the credencial in purple ink, sometimes crooked. In Astorga, an old woman sells fig cakes wrapped in paper outside the cathedral, and the walker eats one standing in the square, fingers sticky.

Practical

Cost
$1,000–1,500 total
Best time
April to October, avoiding winter snow in the Pyrenees and summer's worst heat
Difficulty
Moderate
Time it takes
About 30 days to walk the full 780km
What people get wrong
People overpack and end up posting half their bag home from Pamplona in the first week. Others push too many kilometres on day one over the Pyrenees and spend the rest of the walk nursing the damage.
With
Alone

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