The Best Camino de Santiago Blogs

I have been writing about the Camino de Santiago since 2006. That is enough time to have read most of the English-language Camino blogs that have come and gone, watched a few of them grow into proper planning resources, and seen which ones disappear after the first walk. This page is a short, opinionated list of the Camino blogs I keep coming back to and recommending to pilgrims who write in asking how to plan a Camino de Santiago route from a desk in the United States, Australia, or the UK. The travel-research process for a first Camino can stall on too much detail, and most pilgrims arrive in Santiago de Compostela having read far more pre-trip travel writing than they needed.

The selection rule is simple. The blogs on this list are useful. They give you something a guidebook does not: maps you can actually use, day-by-day notes from the year before last, the small detail about a closed albergue or a moved arrow, the perspective of an older walker or a family with young children, the entertaining read that gets you onto the path in the first place. Tour companies, marketing sites, and one-trip travel diaries are not on the list. Working blogs that earn a re-visit are.

If you are a new pilgrim planning your first Camino, pair one route-detail blog with one personal-narrative blog. The first gives you the logistics. The second gives you the spirit. Together they handle most of what new pilgrims on the Camino need before flying out.

How were these Camino blogs chosen?

The list below is curated on five criteria. None of them is a strict requirement; the best Camino blogs all hit four or five.

• Depth of stage-by-stage detail. Distance, terrain, towns, services, the small things that make a daily plan workable.
• Breadth of route coverage. The Camino Frances is well documented; the Camino del Norte, the Camino Primitivo, the Camino Portugués, the Camino Inglés, and the Via de la Plata are less so. Blogs that cover more than one route earn their place.
• Recency. Albergues open and close. Yellow arrows move. A blog whose latest post was 2014 is a historical document, not a planning tool.
• Practical planning value. Maps, GPS files, packing notes, daily rhythm, costs.
• Voice and credibility. Honest writing from someone who has walked the route, not a marketing summary of someone else’s experience.

Treat the list as a starting library rather than a definitive ranking. Skim a few posts from each blog before you commit to one as your main planning source. A new pilgrim and an experienced pilgrim will often value different blogs; that is fine.

Which Camino blogs have the most detailed maps and up-to-date route coverage?

1. Trepidatious Traveller

Trepidatious Traveller is the most useful single blog for pilgrims on the Camino who want maps and up-to-date notes on the lesser-walked routes. The site covers a wide range of paths, including the Camino del Norte, the Via de la Plata, the Camino Primitivo, the Camino Inglés (also written Camino Ingles) from Ferrol, the Camino Aragonés, and the smaller variants that branch off the main Camino Frances. There are detailed posts on the Portuguese coastal way along the Atlantic from Porto, the inland Portuguese route through Ponte de Lima, and the way down through Ponferrada and El Bierzo on the Camino Francés. The maps are clear, the elevation profiles are honest, and the post-walk write-ups include the kind of detail (water sources, hours of small bars, signpost confusion) that you cannot find in printed guides.

Best for: pilgrims planning a less-walked Camino route, or anyone who likes to read a route description with a real map alongside.

2. Caminoist

Caminoist is the place to go when you want exhaustive route-by-route detail. The site lays out each Camino de Santiago route stage by stage, with distance, elevation, the towns in between, what is open, what is closed, and which accommodations are reliable. It is the closest thing on the open web to a free, well-maintained guidebook for several of the major routes.

Best for: building a day-by-day plan from a single reliable source; comparing the Camino Frances, the Camino del Norte, and the Camino Portugués before deciding which to walk.

Which Camino blog is best for families walking with young children?

3. Girls on the Way

Most Camino planning blogs assume the walker is a fit adult with no pacing constraints. Girls on the Way assumes the walker is a parent with young children, and writes from that perspective. The posts are honest about how family logistics change everything: daily distance is lower, rest days are essential, food and toilet breaks come on the children’s schedule rather than yours, and the accommodation strategy looks different.

Best for: families thinking about a Camino with kids, particularly on the Camino Frances or the Camino Portugués, and any pilgrim who wants to read a Camino journey told from a perspective other than the solo middle-aged hiker.

Which Camino blog gives the clearest day-by-day guides you can follow like an itinerary?

4. Camino My Way

Camino My Way takes a structured approach. Each post in the route series sets out a single day: start town, end town, distance, terrain, what to expect, where to eat, where to sleep. The structure makes it easy to assemble a personal plan: copy the relevant day, paste, edit, repeat. For pilgrims who want a clear, follow-along itinerary rather than a long narrative, it is the cleanest option on this list.

Best for: first-time pilgrims building a day-by-day plan from scratch; walkers who want an at-a-glance reminder of tomorrow’s stage before going to sleep tonight.

Which Camino blog is the most entertaining (and motivating) to read?

5. The Raft of Corks

The Raft of Corks is on this list for the writing. It does not pretend to be a planning resource. What it is, is a long, honest, entertaining account of one walker’s experience on the Camino de Santiago, told in posts that are well-paced and quietly funny. For pilgrims preparing for their first walk, this is the blog to read in the evenings before you fly out; for pilgrims walking the Camino, it is the blog to read in the dorm at the end of a long day to remember why you are here.

Best for: motivation, mood, and the realism that comes from someone who has walked the route and written about it without varnishing it.

Which Camino blog is best for older walkers?

6. My Senior Camino

My Senior Camino is the underrated resource for pilgrims in their sixties and seventies (and older) thinking about a Camino de Santiago route. The site addresses what younger blogs skip: knee strategies, pace, the difference between an albergue dorm and a small private room, when to book a luggage transfer service, when to walk a shorter section instead of the full route. It is also, importantly, free of the patronising tone that some senior-travel sites adopt. The writer assumes you are still capable. You are; the blog helps.

Best for: older pilgrims planning their first or second Camino, or anyone walking the Camino with a partner or parent who is over 65.

One forum worth knowing about

The Camino Forum (Camino de Santiago Forum)

The Camino Forum is the busiest English-language community of pilgrims on the Camino, with threads from walkers all along the Camino at any given moment. It is not a blog; it is a discussion board with threads going back decades. The travel-planning subforum is particularly active, and you will find detailed conversations about every Camino route from the Camino Francés to the lesser-walked variants. The signal-to-noise ratio is mixed, like any large forum, but for current-conditions questions (Is this albergue still open? Has the route around X been re-signed?) it is the fastest way to get an answer from someone who walked the route this month.

Best for: real-time current conditions, niche questions about specific albergues, and conversation with experienced pilgrims happy to share what they know.

How to use these Camino blogs together

None of these blogs is a complete planning solution on its own. Used together they give you what most pilgrims need before walking the Camino de Santiago for the first time:

What you need	Where to look
A day-by-day route plan	Caminoist or Camino My Way
Maps and elevation profiles	Trepidatious Traveller
Family logistics with kids	Girls on the Way
Older-walker pacing advice	My Senior Camino
Reading for motivation	The Raft of Corks
Current-conditions Q&A	The Camino Forum
Long-form route writing across Camino paths	Camino Adventures (this site)

If you only have time to bookmark two, pick one detail-heavy blog and one narrative blog. That combination handles 90% of pre-walk planning. Most pilgrims who walk a second Camino end up with a favorite Camino blog for each route, so do not feel obliged to pick one for life on the first attempt.

Which Camino routes are best covered by these blogs?

Coverage varies across the different routes. The Camino Frances, the French Way that runs across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, is the most documented route on the internet and most of the blogs above cover it in detail. Pilgrims walking a different Camino sometimes have to work harder to find good content. The Camino del Norte, the coastal northern way, is well covered by Trepidatious Traveller and Caminoist. The Camino Primitivo, the original Camino from Oviedo, is covered by Trepidatious Traveller and a smaller number of narrative blogs. The Camino Portugués, both the inland route from Porto and the coastal route along the Atlantic from Porto north, is covered by Caminoist and Camino My Way. The Camino Inglés, the short route from Ferrol or A Coruña, gets occasional posts in the broader blogs but is less well documented. The Via de la Plata, the long route from Seville, is well served by Trepidatious Traveller and a few dedicated narrative blogs.

Route	Strongest blog coverage
Camino Francés (the French Way from Saint Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela)	Caminoist, Camino My Way, The Raft of Corks
Camino del Norte (the northern coastal way)	Trepidatious Traveller, Caminoist
Camino Primitivo (the original Camino from Oviedo)	Trepidatious Traveller
Camino Portugués (from Porto in Portugal, inland or coastal)	Caminoist, Camino My Way
Camino Inglés (from Ferrol on the Galician coast)	Trepidatious Traveller
Via de la Plata (from Seville)	Trepidatious Traveller
Last 100 km from Sarria	Camino My Way, Caminoist

What a pre-walk reading plan looks like

If you are planning to walk the Camino de Santiago in roughly four to six months from now, here is a simple way to use these blogs without losing your evenings to them.

• Four months out: read one full-length narrative blog from end to end (The Raft of Corks works well). The point is not the detail; the point is to feel ready.
• Three months out: pick your route. Use Caminoist or Trepidatious Traveller for a rough stage plan; sketch the days into a spreadsheet.
• Two months out: refine the daily plan. Pull in Camino My Way for the day-by-day notes; check Trepidatious Traveller for any current-conditions caveats.
• One month out: read packing posts, then check the Camino Forum for any recent route changes.
• Two weeks out: stop reading. Trust the plan. Walk it.

The single most common mistake is over-reading. After a certain point, more Camino blogs do not help you plan; they make you anxious. If you find yourself reading the fourth blog post about the same stage, close the laptop and go for a walk in the rain. That is the better preparation for the pilgrimage ahead, more so than reading another opinion about the same albergue.

A note on what is missing from this list

Several other Camino blogs have good content. They are not on this list for one of three reasons. Some have stopped updating, which makes them historical records rather than planning tools. Some are written by tour companies and read like sales material; the favourite Camino route is always the one the company sells. Some are single-trip diaries that do not have the breadth to serve as planning resources. None of those are bad blogs; they are just not on this list.

If you find a Camino blog you love that is not here, write in and tell me. I have been wrong before. This list has changed three times since I first wrote it, and it will probably change again. The community of pilgrims on the Camino keeps producing new writers, and a few of them are excellent.

Frequently asked questions about Camino blogs and planning resources

What is the best Camino de Santiago blog for a first-time pilgrim?

For a first-time pilgrim, pair Caminoist (for stage detail) with The Raft of Corks (for narrative and motivation). Add Trepidatious Traveller if you are walking a less common route like the Camino del Norte, the Camino Primitivo, or the Via de la Plata. That combination covers most of what you will need before flying out.

Are the blogs on this list free to read?

Yes. Every blog on this list is free to read, although several of the writers accept small donations or sell short guides. None of them is behind a paywall. The Camino Forum is also free to read; you need to register a free account to post a question of your own.

Do these blogs cover the lesser-walked Camino routes?

Yes, particularly Trepidatious Traveller and Caminoist. Between them, the Camino Inglés from Ferrol, the Via de la Plata, the Camino Primitivo, the Camino Aragonés, and the smaller variant routes are all reasonably well documented. Coverage is thinner for the very rarely walked routes (the Camino de Madrid, the Camino del Salvador), but a few posts on each exist.

How recent should the blog content be to be useful for planning?

For practical things like albergue prices, opening hours, and route signage, the more recent the better; posts from the past three years are most reliable. For broader things like terrain, distances, and the spirit of each route, older posts (even from a decade ago) are still useful. Always cross-check current-conditions claims with the Camino Forum or a Facebook group before you commit to a closed-looking accommodation.

Should I read Camino blogs while walking, or only beforehand?

Mostly beforehand. While walking the Camino, the blog reading habit can pull you out of the route. A short read in the dorm at the end of the day is fine. A long read about tomorrow’s stage at 7 pm tonight is usually a mistake; trust the yellow arrows and find out tomorrow.