Walking the Camino de Santiago in winter: how short the day really is

By August Frederik Kramer, who has walked the Camino twice · Last updated 11 September 2026

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Almost everything written about walking the Camino in winter is an adjective. Quieter, colder, harder, more solitary, more authentic. All of it may be true and none of it is checkable, and the one thing that genuinely constrains a winter day can be worked out exactly: how much light there is, and how far you can get inside it.

So here is that, month by month, against every stage of all ten routes.

How long the day actually is

Daylight at Santiago’s latitude, on the fifteenth of each month. The walking column takes 1.5 hours off for coffee, lunch and getting your boots back on, and turns the rest into distance at 4 km/h. Both of those are assumptions rather than measurements, and the next section shows how much they matter.

Mid-December is the floor at 9h 03m, about 6h 16m less than mid-June. The far south does slightly better: Granada, where the Mozárabe starts, gets roughly 35 minutes more midwinter light than Galicia. That is worth knowing and it is not worth choosing a route over.

What does not fit

Against a December budget of 30.2 km, 12 of our 210 stages are too long to finish in daylight. They are not spread evenly.

The Camino Mozárabe is the one to plan around: 3 of its 18 stages are longer than a December day, and the longest, Villaharta to Alcaracejos at 34.9 km, would need 8h 44m of walking before a single stop.

5 routes have nothing over the line at all: Camino Francés, Camino Inglés, Camino Finisterre, Camino Invierno, Camino Lebaniego. On daylight alone those are winter routes, and one of them is the most-walked Camino there is.

The assumption that decides the answer

Everything above rests on 4 km/h, and it is worth being blunt about how much work that number is doing. Change it and the conclusion changes more than the season does.

At 3.5 km/h it is 37 stages. At 4.5 km/h it is 1. Two perfectly ordinary walking speeds, one kilometre an hour apart, and the problem almost disappears between them. That is the real finding on this page: whether a winter Camino works is a question about your pace and your willingness to start in the dark, not a question about winter.

It also means a stage sitting within a kilometre of the budget is not really over the line or under it. Our distances are honest to about a kilometre and the daylight figure to about five minutes, so treat the borderline stages as borderline. The ones worth planning around are the ones several kilometres clear of it, and on the Camino Mozárabe the longest is 4.7 km over.

The other winter problem is altitude

Darkness is measurable and mild. Snow on a high pass is neither, and it is the thing that actually closes sections of the Camino.

Look down the high-point column. The Camino Francés tops out at 1,505 m, the highest of the ten, and it has not a single stage too long for a midwinter day. That combination is the whole point: the route with no daylight problem has the biggest altitude problem, and the two questions have different answers.

We do not publish snow data, because we do not have any. What we can show is the height, and height is the input. A pass at 1,505 m in December is a different proposition from the same distance at 1,077 m, and no amount of daylight arithmetic changes that.

The Camino de Invierno is a route, not a season

Search for the Camino in winter and half of what comes back is about the Camino Invierno, which is a different thing: a waymarked route that leaves the Camino Francés at Ponferrada and reaches Santiago from the south-east.

It exists for exactly the reason this page is about. Medieval pilgrims used it when the high ground on the main route was under snow, and our measurements agree with them: from where it branches off at Ponferrada, the Camino Francés still climbs to 1,349 m at O Cebreiro while the Camino Invierno tops out at 1,077, 272 m lower. None of its 13 stages is too long for a December day either. Its longest is 27.1 km.

So if you are reading about winter and you meant the season, this page is the one you want. If you meant the route, the Camino Invierno page has its stages, its profile and its distances.

What this page does not tell you

Which albergues are open. That changes every season, several close for the winter and some open only for booked groups, and a list of them here would be wrong within a year. The municipal ones on the main routes generally stay open and the private ones generally do not, and past that you want a current source rather than this one.

The weather. We measure ground, not sky. Rain in Galicia and cold on the Meseta are real and they are not in our data, so they are not on this page dressed up as if they were.

How these figures were computed

Daylight comes from the standard solar-position formula, taken at the sun’s apparent rise and set so that refraction is included. Checked against published times for Santiago, it lands within about five minutes. It ignores altitude and the shape of your eastern horizon, both of which cost more than five minutes on a real mountain stage. That is why the page gives you a distance budget rather than a sunrise timetable.

Stage lengths and high points are measured along the same GPS tracks the Caminantes app navigates by, sampled against elevation data rather than copied from a guidebook, and they are honest to about a kilometre. The walking pace and the 1.5-hour stop allowance are assumptions, they are stated in the open, and the pace table above shows exactly how far the conclusion moves when you change them. If our stage split is not how you would walk it, how many kilometres a day is the page that takes that apart, and what fits in the days you have uses the same stage data to answer the other short-Camino question.

Common questions

Can you walk the Camino de Santiago in winter?

Yes, and the daylight is less of an obstacle than it sounds. In December there are about 9h 03m of light at Santiago’s latitude, which at 4 km/h leaves room for roughly 30.2 km of walking once you allow 1.5 hours for stops. Only 12 of our 210 stages across all ten routes are longer than that, and 5 routes have none at all.

How many hours of daylight are there on the Camino in December?

About 9h 03m in mid-December at Santiago’s latitude, against 15h 19m in June. The southern routes get a little more: Granada, where the Mozárabe starts, has roughly 35 minutes more midwinter light than Santiago.

Which Camino is best in winter?

On daylight alone, 5 routes have no stage too long for a December day: Camino Francés, Camino Inglés, Camino Finisterre, Camino Invierno, Camino Lebaniego. Altitude is the other question and it points somewhere different. The Camino Francés tops out at 1,505 m, the highest of the ten, and the Camino Invierno at 1,077 m, 428 m lower. Those are whole-route figures, though: the Camino Francés reaches its summit 19.3 km before the Camino Invierno branches off, so that is not the climb it saves you. What it avoids is the 1,349 m at O Cebreiro, 272 m above its own ceiling.

What is the Camino de Invierno?

A route, not a season, and the confusion is the reason this is asked. It leaves the Camino Francés at Ponferrada and reaches Santiago without crossing the high ground the main route goes over, which is why medieval pilgrims used it when that ground was under snow. It is 13 of our stages, its longest day is 27.1 km, and none of its stages is too long for a midwinter day.

Is November too cold to walk the Camino?

Temperature is not something we measure, so this page will not pretend to answer that. What it can tell you is the light: mid-November has 9h 47m of it at Santiago’s latitude, which is 0h 44m more than mid-December and enough for roughly 33.1 km of walking.

How were these daylight figures calculated?

From the standard solar-position formula, at the sun’s apparent rise and set rather than at the horizon its centre crosses, so refraction is included. Checked against published times for Santiago: it lands within about five minutes. It takes no account of altitude or of a mountain on your eastern horizon, both of which cost more than five minutes on a real stage, which is why the page gives a budget rather than a timetable.

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