Walking the Camino Primitivo: A Helpful Guide For Planning Your Trip

Walking the Camino Primitivo was something I originally intended to tick off the wish list in September 2020.

But, Covid-19 had other ideas.

Fast forward four years and I was finally able to turn this idea into reality.

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A little bit about the Camino Primitivo

The Camino Primitivo is a 321-kilometre-long pilgrimage route that starts in Oviedo and finishes at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain.

Camino Primitivo route map, shared from Viajes Camino de Santiago

It’s part of a whole network of ancient pilgrim routes (known as the Camino de Santiago) that stretch across Europe but all come together at the tomb of St. James, located inside the cathedral.  St. James was one of Jesus’  12 apostles.  The Spanish for ‘Saint James’ is ‘Santiago,’ so the ‘Camino de Santiago’ is literally ‘The Way of St. James.’

The Camino Primitivo was actually the original Camino, reportedly walked by King Alfonso II of Asturias in 814 AD.

You’ll hike the first 155 kilometres of the Camino Primitivo through the Asturias region, before crossing into Galicia to complete the remaining 170 kilometres.  The Camino Primitivo merges with the Camino Frances (The French Way, and the most popular Camino) in Melide — a city that’s famous for being the birthplace of Pulpo a la Gallega (Galician-style octopus).

A Roman soldier guards the entrance to Lugo across the Ponta Vella (old bridge).

Along the way, you’ll pass the ancient city of Lugo — the only city in the former Roman Empire to still possess a complete circuit of Roman city walls.

The route takes you through a variety of natural settings, from serene river valleys and vast forests to the rugged beauty of the Cantabrian Mountains. As you ascend into the mountainous regions, you’ll have the option of traversing the Hospitales route, a high mountain pass that, on a clear day, offers some of the most spectacular views on the entire Camino.

So, if you love historic towns and cities and stunning mountain scenery then walking the Camino Primitivo might be right up your street!

Read on…..

Why choose the Camino Primitivo?

I chose to walk the Camino Primitivo for a few major reasons:

• I work a full-time job and therefore the amount of leave I can take each year is limited.  For this particular trip, I had just two weeks at my disposal.  Whilst I could easily have picked one of the longer routes and walked part of the whole trail, my preference was to find a route that I could walk in its entirety.  And, my research indicated that the Camino Primitivo could be completed in 14 days, walking an average of 23 kilometres (14 miles) per day.
• I wanted a route that would be reasonably challenging, whilst still being enjoyable.  I am a keen (I’m reluctant to use the word ‘experienced’ because my navigation skills need work!) hiker and I run regularly too, sometimes over long distances and often up in the hills.    I’ve also completed a few multi-day hikes in the past, so I already had a reasonably good level of physical fitness when I made the decision to walk my first Camino.  The Camino Primitivo is regarded as one of the toughest Caminos, because it crosses the Cantabrian mountains, and this piqued my interest because walking in the mountains is both exhilarating and also more challenging when compared with a much flatter route.
• I didn’t want to walk a busy Camino.  A large part of what I enjoy about hiking is the solitude, so I didn’t want to be sharing the trail with loads of other walkers.  Although the Camino Primitivo is gradually becoming more popular, it still only sees a fraction of the walkers that other Camino routes do.  To illustrate this fact with some statistics, of all the 442,003 pilgrims who completed a Camino route in 2023, just 20,714 walked the Camino Primitivo — that’s 4.7%.

What time of year should I walk the trail?

Despite the fact that many people assume that the weather in Spain is reliably warm and sunny for at least six months of the year, it may surprise you to learn that the Spanish climate is highly diverse and varies considerably across the country’s different regions.

For example, the average annual rainfall in the Cabo de Gata Nature Reserve in Almería is under 156 millimetres, yet in parts of Galicia (where the Camino Primitivo passes through) and the Pyrenees, this rises to 2200 millimetres!

Even in August, there’s a high probability you’ll get rain, and parts of the trail can still be very muddy.

The northern part of the country (especially the regions of Galicia, Basque Country, Asturias, Cantabria, and Navarre) has an oceanic climate, characterised by cool to warm summers, cool to mild winters and a fairly narrow temperature range.

Add to this the fact that the Camino Primitivo sees you walking through mountainous terrain (and we all know how quickly conditions can change in the mountains) and you’ll begin to understand why the weather along this particular trail can be unpredictable, even at the height of summer in July and August.

Sunshine in the foreground and foreboding rain clouds overhead, Oviedo to Grado section of the Camino Primitivo

Whilst I can handle cold weather when I’m hiking, I hate walking in the rain. So, I wanted to avoid walking the Camino Primitivo during the wettest months, which are October through to March.  Looking at the precipitation graphs on the Camino Weather website, I concluded that the driest period to walk the route is between the middle-end of June and the middle of September.  I chose the end of August/beginning of September for two reasons:

• We have a bank holiday in the UK at the end of August, which meant that if I booked my trip over that weekend, I’d get a bonus leave day.
• I wanted to try and avoid the worst of the crowds in July and August by walking towards the end of the latter month and into September.

Santiago signpost, Oviedo to Grado section of the Camino Primitivo

I realise that my experience is not necessarily indicative of the experience of others who have hiked the trail at the same sort of time of year but it should serve as a rough example.  Aside from the final day of walking the Camino Primitivo, when it rained heavily ALL DAY, I only got caught in two or three short showers.  But, I expected rain and I had prepared for rain.  What surprised me the most about the weather was the amount of cloud around at that time of year and how much the temperatures dropped during the evening.

Don’t get me wrong, I was treated to some beautiful sunshine too — most notably, the afternoon I spent exploring Oviedo before I started walking the following day; the entire day I spent hiking the stunning Hospitales detour; afternoon arrivals into Tineo, Lugo, and Castroverde; and post-hike beers in Grandas de Salime, Berducedo and Arzúa — but I’d say that it was cloudy for a slightly larger percentage of the time than it was sunny.

It was beautifully sunny and warm on the day that I arrived into Tineo.

I’d also packed shorts and sleeveless tops, and, whilst I wore my shorts simply because they were more comfortable to hike in, it never got warm enough to require the sleeveless tops and I kept my long-sleeve top on for a large chunk of the time.  In the evenings, I regularly wore all the layers I’d brought with me (t-shirt, long-sleeve, fleece and waterproof).

If my experience is anything to go by, I don’t think you need to worry that it will ever be too hot to walk the Camino Primitivo, even if you choose to do so in August, as I did.  I’d say the temperatures topped out at 25 degrees during the day, but mostly hovered around 15 degrees.

How fit do I need to be?

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I was already reasonably fit when I made the decision to walk the Camino Primitivo, so my observations about the difficulty level of the trail are from my perspective as a moderately active, moderately fit individual.

Overall, I didn’t find the Camino Primitivo to be as tough as my research had led me to believe it would be.  Yes, there were a few challenging uphill stretches that worked my lungs and my calves in equal measure, but on the whole I found it to be fairly easy walking, especially the latter end of the trail.

I loved all the dogs and cats I met along the Camino Primitivo

And, the Hospitales detour was nowhere near as difficult as other sections had been.  The primary challenge this section presents is the lack of facilities along the trail.  There are zero cafes or vending machines (believe it or not, vending machines are a fairly common sight along the rest of the Camino Primitivo), and we found only one water source — which, apparently is not always operational.

There is also a distinct lack of shade.  But, like I said, the temperatures didn’t exactly leave me longing for shade.  So, this wasn’t an issue for me.

I’d say that the most important thing to consider is that you need to be comfortable walking distances of over 10 miles before you start walking the Camino Primitivo.

Nice clean hiking shoes at the beginning of the Camino Primitivo hiking trail in Oviedo

What is the scenery like?

As this was my first Camino, I don’t have other Camino routes to compare the Primitivo with, but I can confidently say that the scenery was everything I’d hoped it would be; my only disappointment was that the sun didn’t shine on those incredible landscapes just a little bit more frequently than it did.

Like other pilgrims I spoke to along the way, I found the scenery on the Asutrian section of the trail a lot more dramatic and varied than the Galician part; it also benefits from more sizeable shifts in elevation, which made the walk more interesting.

The kind of landscapes you’ll be walking through on the Asturian section of the Camino Primitivo

Aside from the initial two miles of the Camino Primitivo, when you walk through Oviedo’s commercial and residential outskirts, barely any of the route involves pounding the pavements.

Yes, there is some road walking involved, but most of the sections where you follow the road, you actually walk along a track running parallel with the road.  I’d say the vast majority of the Camino Primitivo follows peaceful forest trails, but you’ll also walk along ‘green lanes,’ wide gravel tracks, quiet country lanes, and across high mountain passes.

Woodland wanders, Camino Primitivo

And how about food along the trail?

I’d read articles about how terrible the food was along the Camino Primitivo and how difficult it can be to find vegetarian food, so my expectations were pretty low when I set off.  But, actually, I didn’t find it too bad.

However, I do eat fish on occasion, especially when I’m travelling somewhere that doesn’t cater particularly well for vegetarians.  So, I was able to eat an ensalada mixta (which quite often came with tuna, but you can request it “sin atún”) and pulpo a la gallega (octopus, Galician style).

Generally, breakfast would be eaten at a local cafe and would consist of a large café con leche (milky coffee) and a tostada con tomate y queso (toast with tomato and cheese).

Lunch would be a cereal bar on the go or perhaps an ensalada mixta if I happened to pass a cafe that looked like they might serve a decent one.

And, dinner would either be a pilgrim meal (a set menu consisting of a starter, a couple of options for the main course, a dessert and a glass (or in some cases, a carafe!) of wine or water) or whatever non-meat options the local restaurant or cafe had available.  I definitely didn’t go hungry, and in the bigger towns and cities, I actually ate really well.

Do I need to speak Spanish?

No, but it definitely helps to have a few basic phrases under your belt.

Whilst you won’t need to use Spanish in the cities (Oviedo, Lugo, Melide, and Santiago), it’s good to get into the habit of doing so, because you’ll walk through plenty of small villages and agricultural hamlets where barely any English is spoken or understood.

And, considering that roughly 45% of people who walk the Camino Primitivo are from Spain, knowing a little Spanish will enrich your conversations with fellow pilgrims, too.

Walking the Camino Primitivo | Resources

• The ‘Buen Camino‘ app.  I actually used this one in the planning stages as well as whilst actually on the trail.  It’s easily one of the most comprehensive Camino guides around, and is the information contained within it is kept largely up-to-date.  The app provides a detailed trajectory of the route, featuring thorough maps and elevation profiles.  You’ll also find an index of localities, accommodation listings, and the option to plan your daily stages.
• The ‘Footpath’ app.  I’ve talked about how much I love this app in previous posts; I never go running or hiking in unfamiliar territory without it.  Essentially it allows you to map routes with your finger.  You choose your start point on the map and then, using the ‘draw’ button, you simply trace a line along the road or footpath you want to follow.  When you’ve finished, you save the route and the app will calculate the total distance of the route you’ve created as well as giving you an accurate elevation profile.  As you follow the route in real time, you’ll be able to see where you are along the route and the distance you’ve covered up to that point.  It’s also really easy to spot when you’ve deviated from the trail, and to find a route to get you back on to it.  Whilst you need internet coverage to map your route, you don’t need to be connected to the internet to follow it. So, I would generally map my route for the day ahead whilst I was connected to WIFI in my albergue or pension the night before.
• The Gronze website. A fellow pilgrim actually introduced me to this site while we were walking the trail, and I feel it’s worthy of a mention here because it’s a very user-friendly site, and all the information is laid out in straightforward, logical, manner.  A detailed description of each stage is accompanied by written directions, points of interest along the way (and at what distance into the route you can find them), and the location of facilities along the trail.  You can also view available accommodation, together with costs/amenities/number of beds or rooms/contact details and sometimes links to make a booking as well.
• Blog posts.  Whilst all the above resources are invaluable, it’s also really helpful to read about people’s first-hand experiences of walking the Camino Primitivo, and any advice and tips they can offer as a result of those experiences.  The blog posts I found particularly useful were from Never Ending Footsteps; What’s Dave Doing?; and Stingy Nomads.
• Vlogs.   Some of the best and most useful I found were from Sarah Williams of Tough Girl Challenges, Efrén Gonzáles of Walk with Efren and Shaun and Lainey of Days we Spend.
• The Camino Primitivo guidebook.  Considering this book is just 64 pages long and weighs almost nothing (so, is a perfect little companion to bring along on your walk), it’s packed with lots of useful information about each stage of the route, and includes maps and accommodation listings.
• aloSIM.  I was fortunate enough to be able to use my inclusive minutes, texts and data from my UK package in Spain for no extra charge.  However, if you’re not then an eSIM is a great choice.  An eSIM is a downloadable SIM card that gives you prepaid mobile data.  They’re dead easy to use, really good value for money and work in over 175 countries.  You can use ‘GATG’ for 5% discount off your first order with aloSIM.

Walking the Camino Primitivo | Accommodation

Finding accommodation is probably one of the biggest challenges along the Camino Primitivo, because there isn’t as much of an infrastructure for pilgrims when compared with other Camino routes.   This is partly due to the fact that a lot of the towns and villages the trail passes through are pretty small and very rural, and partly due to the low numbers of people walking the trail, so there’s not as much of a demand for accommodation.

Flowers (and shells!) along the trail.

You’ll also find that there are quite often long stretches of the trail either without any accommodation available or with minimal beds available, so you do have to plan your days carefully when walking the Camino Primitivo.

Where there is accommodation, you’ll generally have a few options available to you:

• Municipal albergues.  Theses are like hostels, run by the local municipality, and are for pilgrims only (you have to show your credential when you check in).  Municpal albergues have a shared sleeping area (dorm room) and shared bathrooms.  Some have a kitchen and laundry facilities, too.  Municipal albergues cannot be booked in advance (it’s just a first-come, first-served basis) and are the cheapest form of accommodation available along the trail.  Municipal albergues are generally open from Easter week until the end of October.
• Private albergues.  These are privately-run hostels where anyone can stay, and you can quite often book these in advance.  They will usually have dorm rooms available as well as a small number of private rooms too.  Again, bathrooms are shared (unless you have a private room) and there is often a kitchen that you can use to cook meals as well as laundry facilities.  Some of them will serve food and drinks too and there is usually a ‘pilgrim meal’ available.
• Pensions.  These are small, often family-run guesthouses with a few private rooms available.  Sometimes, you’ll have to share bathrooms; sometimes you won’t.  Some pensions are more like hotels where you’ll just have a room, whereas others are more like hostels, with kitchens, common areas and laundry facilities available.
• Hotels.  You’ll generally only find these in the larger towns and cities.  Fairly self-explanatory – private rooms with private bathrooms.

Pension Roma, Castroverde – one of the nicest places I stayed at on the Camino Primitivo (complete with private balcony!)

I booked all my accommodation in advance (I will explain my reasoning further along in this post), so I stayed in a mix of private albergues, pensions, and hotels, as follows.  I took a rest-day in Lugo (hence stopping for two nights) and I had to stop an extra night in Santiago due to my flight home on the Sunday being cancelled (thanks Ryanair!).

• Day 0 | Green Hostel, Oviedo (booked on booking.com)
• Day 1 | Albergue La Quintana, Grado (booked via Whatsapp; you can find contact details on their website)
• Day 2 | Albergue Casa Sueño, Salas (booked on booking.com)
• Day 3 | Albergue de Peregrinos Palacio de Meras, Tineo (booked via email; you can find contact details on their website)
• Day 4 | Albergue Los Hospitales, Colinas de Arriba (booked on booking.com)
• Day 5 | Casa de Aldea Araceli, Berducedo (booked on booking.com)
• Day 6 | Albergue Porta de Grandas, Grandas de Salime (booked via email; you can find contact details on their website)
• Day 7 | Hotel Portico, A Fonsagrada (booked on booking.com)
• Day 8 | Pension Roma, Castroverde (booked on booking.com)
• Day 9 and 10 | Hostal ALBA, Lugo (booked on booking.com)
• Day 11 | A Toqueira, As Seixas (booked via their own website)
• Day 12 | A Casa do Lajueiro, Arzúa (booked on booking.com)
• Day 13 | Peregrina Pension 3, O Pedrouzo (booked on booking.com)
• Day 14 and 15 | Os Sobrinos Do Pai, Santiago de Compostela (booked on booking.com)
• Day 16 | Denike, Santiago de Compostela (booked on booking.com)

Walking the Camino Primitivo | Planning your stages

How you choose to plan your stages, and, in fact, whether you plan them at all, will depend upon how much time you have available to walk the Camino Primitivo, how far you want to walk each day, and what kind of accommodation you want to stay in.

If you don’t have a fixed schedule, you love the spontaneity of being able to stop wherever you fancy doing so,  and you’re happy to stay in municipal albergues, then you don’t really need to plan your stages as such.  However, it may be useful to keep a record of where the municipal albergues are located and how many beds are available in each one, because once all the beds are taken, your only option is to continue walking to the next albergue (which, on the Camino Primitivo, is not necessarily just a few kilometres away).

This is one of the main reasons I chose to book all my accommodation in advance — because I’m not much of a morning person, so I didn’t want to force myself to have to get up stupidly early, and then end up not enjoying my day because I needed to race to the next destination as quickly as possible, in order to secure a bed.  This, folks, is what’s known as the Camino ‘bed race.’  On some days, I was woken up by fellow pilgrims setting off for the day as early as 5 a.m. (bearing in mind that it wasn’t getting light until around 7:30 a.m. when I was walking the Camino!).

One of the benefits of setting off a little earlier in the morning is the beautiful sunrises you are treated to. This was not long after leaving As Seixas on day 11.

Booking in advance also forced me to stop walking at a defined point along the trail at the end of every day.  I know what I’m like, always curious to discover what lies ‘a little further along.’  If I hadn’t pre-booked and hadn’t arrived somewhere that really appealed to me as a place to stop the night, I could see myself continuing on and burning out too soon.

Lastly, I didn’t want to spend every single night in a shared dorm with other people; I value my sleep too much, especially when I know I have a full day of hiking ahead!  Don’t get me wrong, I loved the social aspect of staying in albergues (it was at the albergue in Colinas de Arriba that I met the majority of people who became my ‘pilgrim family’), so I wouldn’t have wanted to have stayed solely in private rooms.  But, equally, I loved being able to properly unpack my backpack, not having to lock everything away when I went to the shower, and waking up feeling refreshed after an interrupted nights’ sleep.

I tried to plan my stages so that I was walking similar distances each day and so that I was staying in places that were visually appealing, had enough to see and do once I’d finished my walk, and that offered enough of an infrastructure to enable me to source food and drink for dinner and breakfast, and perhaps top up my snack supply for the coming days.

Discounting travel days, I had 15 days available to me, but I wanted to take a rest day in Lugo (because I’d heard that it was a lovely city to explore and I was treating this as a holiday as much as a walk) and I wanted a full day to explore Santiago at the end.

The beautiful city of Santiago de Compostela – the end point of the Camino Primitivo

This left me 13 days to walk the Camino Primitivo.  In hindsight, I could quite easily have done it in 12, and, ultimately, I wished I had, because it rained continually throughout my last day on the trail.  And, arriving into Santiago in the pouring rain wasn’t fun at all!

I planned my days, as follows:

• Day 1 | Oviedo to Grado (28.2km/17.4 miles)
• Day 2 | Grado to Salas (23.7km/14.7 miles)
• Day 3 | Salas to Tineo (20.7km /12.9 miles)
• Day 4 | Tineo to Colinas de Arriba (24km /14.9 miles)
• Day 5 | Colinas de Arriba to Berducedo (21.4km / 13.3 miles)
• Day 6 | Berducedo to Grandas de Salime (20.6km/12.8 miles)
• Day 7 | Grandas de Salime to A Fonsagrada (26.5km /16.5 miles)
• Day 8 | A Fonsagrada to Castroverde (33.2km/20.6 miles)
• Day 9 | Castroverde to Lugo (23.3km/14.5 miles)
• Day 10 | Lugo to As Seixas (33.2km/20.6 miles)
• Day 11 | As Seixas to Arzúa (28.3km/17.6 miles)
• Day 12 | Arzúa to O Pedrouzo (20.6km/12.8 miles)
• Day 13 | O Pedrouzo to Santiago de Compostela (20.1km/12.5 miles)

Walking the Camino Primitivo | What to pack

I did so much research about what to pack for the Camino Primitivo, because I needed to ensure that my pack was a light as possible.

General consensus is that you should aim to carry no more than 10% of your body weight, but I weigh less than 50 kilograms which meant getting my pack down to just five kilograms.  Considering my pack itself weighed 1.03 kilograms, there was no way I’d be able to get away with carrying just four kilograms, even if I left my DSLR camera behind (which I did), but I did get the weight down to just under seven kilograms (around eight with water and snacks).  Carrying this amount of weight with this particular pack was comfortable, even on the longer days on the trail.

At over 33 kilometres, the Lugo to As Seixas section was one of my longest days on the Camino Primitivo.

In hindsight, I could perhaps have left a few small items at home but on the whole, I was very happy with what I packed and how I packed it.  I’m thinking about writing a whole post dedicated to this topic, so I won’t go over it in too much detail here, but to give you a general idea about what you need to bring, these are the essentials I couldn’t have done without:

• A comfortable backpack.  Before I started walking the Camino Primitivo, I didn’t own a backpack suitable for the walk.  I had a 20-litre day pack (not quite big enough) and a 40-litre backpack (way too big).  I needed a pack that I could bring on to the plane as hand luggage, but so many of the hiking backpacks I looked at were too tall to comply with Ryanair’s Priority cabin bag policy, which is 55 x 40 x 20cm.  I finally settled on the Osprey Tempest Pro 28, which was a women’s specific fit, was available in XS/S, and measured 55 x 29 x 22cm.  I was hoping I’d get away with the additional two centimetres! (spoiler alert: I did).  Unfortunately the Tempest Pro 28 is no longer available online, but if I did a similar walk again, I’d probably go for the Deuter Futura 25 SL (53 x 28 x 20cm), or, if I wasn’t restricted by dimensions, the Osprey Tempest 30 (61 x 28 x 25cm).
• A comfortable pair of boots or shoes.  My preference is always for trail running shoes rather than hiking boots, unless the terrain is particularly technical (which it isn’t on the Camino Primitivo).  I chose shoes which are not waterproof, because I wanted them to be as light as possible and I wanted them to dry quickly if they got wet.  I went with the Inov8 Roclite G275, because I find the grip is amazing on Inov8s and this particular model fits my narrow feet well, whilst still having plenty of room in the toe box (I went for a half size bigger than my normal size to allow for my feet swelling throughout the day).  But, shoes are very much an individual choice — everyone’s feet are different.
• Ear plugs and a face mask.  Both are absolute essentials if you’re planning on spending any time sleeping in albergues.  I love my Loop quiet earplugs because they really comfortable, come in their own little carry case and also come with four ear tip sizes (XS/S/M/L) for the perfect fit, even if you’ve got small ears like me.
• Clothes pegs.  You will need to wash clothes along the trail, and although albergues will provide drying space and washing lines, they won’t (in my experience) provide clothes pegs.  So, bring a few of your own.
• A sleeping bag liner.  Again, this is only an essential if you’re sleeping in albergues.  Unless you book a private room, you’ll only be given a paper sheet and pillow case.  I bought this silk sleeping bag liner because it only weighs 110 grams.  If you’re walking the Camino Primitivo outside of summer, you may want to pack a small sleeping bag too.
• A travel towel.  I think I may have found the smallest and most lightweight travel towel ever! The only problem was that lots of other walkers seemed to have found it too — I saw quite a few identical ones hung up in the drying rooms at the albergues.
• A waterproof jacket.  As you’ve probably gathered from my earlier comments in this post, regardless of what time of year you’re walking the Camino Primitivo, you’re likely to get rain at some point along the trail.  Some people swear by ponchos (because they cover you and your backpack and are easy to throw on when the heavens open), but I opted for a waterproof jacket and waterproof over-trousers, because I could see the wind blowing the poncho around, catching on brambles, and generally annoying me as I walked.  I brought my Inov8 Stormshell because it’s the most lightweight waterproof I own (it weighs just 149 grams) and it’s got a waterproof rating of 20,000mm HH.
• A drybag.  I used this Osprey ultralight dry bag as a backpack liner and then put all my stuff inside it.  Although I have used backpack covers before, I find this method preferable because you have complete peace of mind that all your belongings are contained within it, and if you happen to put your backpack down in a puddle by mistake (yes, I’ve done it!) then at least it’s only your backpack that suffers rather than your clothes, or, worse still, your electronics.

Whilst I could probably have done without them, I also loved the benefits of having my Tilley hikers hat to protect me from the sun, my GoPro to record footage of my walk, my Garmin Venu smartwatch to record distances, elevation and GPS tracks, and my Osprey water bladder to keep me hydrated on the go.

Stay hydrated, folks! I loved using a water bladder and being able to take a drink on the go.

Walking the Camino Primitivo | Getting to the start of the trail

To walk the Camino Primitivo, you’ll firstly need to get to Oviedo, and then when you’re finished, you’ll need to make it back from Santiago de Compostela.  Although Asturias airport is the closest to Oviedo (located on the coast around 30 miles north of the city), it’s very difficult to find any direct flights there from the UK, unless you’re travelling from London.

I live in Shrewsbury, just under 50 miles northwest of Birmingham.  So, Birmingham and Manchester are the most convenient airports for me to get to; the direct train to Birmingham airport takes around one hour and 20 minutes.

If you’re also based in the Midlands, you can fly directly from Birmingham to Santander with Ryanair (I paid just £23 for my flight at the end of August 2024).  Santander’s airport is only seven kilometres from its main bus station, and regular buses make the 15-minute journey from the airport.  From Santander’s bus station, there are frequent daily departures to Oviedo, with a journey time of two and a half hours.  You can check timetables on the Alsa website here.

Scenes from Oviedo – the start of the Camino Primitivo

Once I’d finished walking the Camino Primitivo, getting back from Santiago was a little trickier.  Santiago does have its own airport (around 14 kilometres from the city; you walk past it on the last day of the Camino Primitivo), but the only UK airport you can get direct flights to from there is London Stansted.

Seeing as though Stansted airport is a 4-5 hour train journey from Shrewsbury, I did look at alternative options.  However, catching a bus back to Santander to fly home from there would have taken around nine hours, flying back to Birmingham on an indirect flight was much more expensive and involved a wait at either Barcelona or Madrid airports, and I couldn’t get the timings of the bus journeys to either Porto or Madrid to work with the times of the flights from there.  The cheapest and quickest option was to fly from Santiago de Compostela to Stansted airport and then to make the journey back to Shrewsbury by train.

Picking up your credential and collecting stamps

There are a number of places in Oviedo where you can pick up your credential (also known as a ‘Pilgrim Passport’):

• Tourist Office: Located at Plaza de la Constitución nº 4, a few steps from the cathedral. 
• Cathedral of San Salvador: You can buy a credential at the cathedral, but hours are reduced in the winter and it’s closed on Sundays. 
• From the Astur Leonesa Association at Albergue El Salvador, Calle Adolfo Posada, No. 3.  Tel: 985 22 85 25.

If you’re likely to be arriving into Oviedo late at night and plan to set off early the next morning, you can order one online, to arrive before you leave home.

In order to get your Compostela from the cathedral in Santiago at the end of your Camino, you must collect at least two stamps per day during the final 100 kilometres (so, from Lugo onwards) of your walk.  Stamps can be found inside churches (so, if you pass one, it’s always worth popping inside), and at albergues and cafes.  It’s always worth asking staff “tiene un sello?” if you visit a cafe along the route, as they don’t always keep them out on display.

And finally, what can I expect from the walk itself?

I was actually planning to give you a brief run-down of what each individual day involves and what you can see along the way, but this post is already over 5000 words long (!), so I think I’ll save that for another time.  Instead, I’ll try and summarise my experience and give you a few tips on what you shouldn’t miss and what you should look out for.

1 | I’d normally aim to leave my accommodation around 8 a.m. every morning (the same sort of time I leave for work when I’m at home), and I’d stop for breakfast somewhere along the way around 50% of the time; the remaining 50% I’d eat my pre-made cheese sandwiches on the go or I’d have already eaten breakfast where I was staying.

Leaving at this time and taking one or two coffee breaks along the way normally saw me arriving into my final destination for the day sometime between around 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., which gave me the perfect amount of time to wash my clothes, grab a post-hike beer, do a bit of sightseeing, and find somewhere for dinner.

Scenes from Castroverde – one of my favourite stops on the Camino Primitivo

2 | With the exception of the last two days (when you cannot escape the hoards of other pilgrims once the route has joined up with the Frances), I didn’t see a soul for large stretches of the trail.  Of course, there were days when I chose to walk with other pilgrims, at least for part of the trail.  But, when and if I wanted to continue solo, I’d soon find myself alone, surrounded only by the sounds of running water, cow bells or the distant whirr of wind turbines on the hilltops.

3 | Every day on the Camino Primitivo seems to start with a climb.  It’s a great way to get your heart and your legs warmed up, and gives you a fantastic excuse to stop at the top — in order to admire the views, of course 😉

4 | The Camino Primitivo is largely very well signposted.  There are regular, visible markers (either in the form of yellow shells or yellow arrows) that I found it almost impossible to get lost, even given my propensity for doing so!  Although I followed the route on my Footpath app, primarily just to get a general idea of where the trail was going and to be able to locate any cafes/shops along the way, I rarely needed to use it because I’d gone off trail and needed to find a way back on to it.  I think that only happened when I was busy filming on my GoPro and wasn’t paying attention.

It is important to note, however, that, on the Asturian side, the direction of the lines on the shell as they splay outwards is not the direction you’re meant to walk, which did confuse me somewhat.  It was fine if a yellow arrow accompanied the shell, but did leave me having to mentally flip my logical thought in the opposite direction when it wasn’t.  On the Galician side, you’ll find a confusing mixture of directional shells — some are like the Asturian ones, but others want you to follow the shell in the more logical direction.

If you take away the arrow, which direction would your head tell you to walk in?

5 | If you come across a detour or diversion along the trail, my advice is to take it.  Whilst some of the ‘alternative routes’ are only marginally more interesting (I made my comparison by asking pilgrims who’d not followed the ones that I did), there are those that you really shouldn’t miss.  The Monastario de Santa María la Real de Obona is one of them.

6 | If there’s one cafe you stop at along the whole trail, make it the Hotel Las Grandas on the approach into Grandas de Salime.  It doesn’t look much from the outside (apart from the fact that it’s bright yellow), but walk through the main reception and bar area out on to the terrace and you’ll be rewarded with incredible views of Salime Reservoir.  On a sunny day, you won’t want to leave.

Scenes from the descent into Salime Reservoir. Spot the Hotel Las Grandas in the photo on the top left. The views from the terrace there are stunning!

And while we’re om the subject of cafes, these are pretty few and far between along the trail until you reach Melide, and some ‘cafes’ marked on the map are simply vending machines.  So, my advice would be to stop at the first one you pass as you leave town every morning.  Be warned, though, that this may be quite a few miles in.

If you’re someone who struggles to function well without your morning coffee, you’re going to have to walk a long way for it on some days along the Camino Primitivo!

I always looked forward to my first coffee stop of the day along the Camino Primitivo.

7 |  If I walked the Camino again, I probably wouldn’t choose to take a rest day in Lugo.  The reason I say this is that all the friends I’d made along the way (with the exception of a father and son-in-law duo I’d met at Hotel Las Grandas) were not taking a rest day, so they were a day ahead of me when I began walking again the day after.  And, although I did bump into a few of them in Santiago, I missed having them around during the latter part of my Camino.  Yes, I loved walking alone during the day, but equally, I loved catching up with my fellow pilgrims over a beer or two at the end of each day.

That said, I definitely think Lugo is worthy of a good look around, so my advice to anyone walking the Camino Primitivo would be to set off as early as possible on the day that you are due to arrive into the city.  It’s a reasonably flat 23 kilometres from Castroverde (where I wholeheartedly recommend that you stop the night), with not much in the way of services along the way, so you should be able to make good time.

Scenes from the walled city of Lugo, Camino Primitivo

8 |  And, lastly, although there’s a lot of discussion around the best way to do it, at the end of the day, everyone walks their own Camino.  It doesn’t matter whether you choose to walk alone or with others; how much you pack; whether you book your accommodation in advance or leave it to chance; or how far you decide to walk each day and at what speed you do so.  It’s your journey — do it your way.

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