The last 100 km of the Camino de Santiago: where it starts on every route

By August Frederik Kramer, who has walked the Camino twice · Last updated 29 August 2026

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About half of everyone who reaches Santiago walked only the last hundred kilometres of a route, and almost all of them started in one of three towns. Ask where the last 100 km begins and you will be told Sarria, or Tui, or Ferrol, and then the answer stops.

That is not the rule. The rule is a distance, and a distance lands somewhere different on every route. There are seven routes that finish at the cathedral, and the line falls in seven different places, two of which are nowhere near a town anyone advertises. On one of them the obvious starting town sits on exactly 100.0 km with no margin at all. On another, a town that thousands of people start from every year misses the bar by about two hundred metres.

Below is where the line actually falls on each of them, measured along the tracks rather than copied from a brochure.

The rule, in one paragraph

The Compostela goes to anyone who walks the final 100 km into Santiago on one recognised route, continuously, with a stamped credencial, finishing at the cathedral. It is not 100 km anywhere: the last stage has to be the one that arrives. There are real exceptions, including a shorter distance for pilgrims who began a recognised route outside Spain, and there is a widely repeated stamp rule that is not quite what people think it is. All of that is in our guide to getting the Compostela, which states it properly. This page is only about where the 100 km mark sits on the ground.

Where the line falls on every route into Santiago

Each row is the last stage town on that route from which you still clear 100 km, and next to it the following town, which does not. The distances are to the cathedral door.

Two things in that table are worth stopping on.

O Porriño misses by 0.2 km

On the Camino Portugués, Valença is 120.8 km out and clears the bar easily. The next stage town, O Porriño, is 99.8 km. It is short by roughly the length of a long street.

Nobody sets out to start there, but people arrive there by accident: a delayed flight into Vigo, a night booked in the wrong town, a decision to skip a stage because a knee hurts. If your walking starts from the wrong side of that line, the certificate you are walking for is not issued, and you find that out at the counter in Santiago rather than at the start.

Two routes have no margin at all

These start from a town our measurement puts within 3 km of the bar:

• Camino del Norte, from A Castiñeira: 101.7 km
• Camino Primitivo, from Lugo: 100.0 km

A figure that close to the line is not a verdict, it is a coin toss. Our distance is measured along one track. A variant, a diversion round roadworks, or simply a different mapped line moves it by more than the margin, and the Pilgrim's Office is not reading your GPS anyway: it is reading stamps, and it works from recognised starting points rather than from arithmetic. Nobody's measurement can honestly tell you that those towns are safe, including ours.

The answer is boring and it works: start one stage further out. It costs you an afternoon and it removes the only question that cannot be fixed once you have finished walking.

Three routes cannot answer this question

Ten routes are described on this site and only seven appear above, which is not an oversight. The other three do not have a last 100 km into Santiago in any meaningful sense:

• Camino Finisterre runs Santiago de Compostela to Finisterre.
• Camino Mozárabe runs Granada to Mérida.
• Camino Lebaniego runs San Vicente de la Barquera to Santo Toribio de Liébana.

The Camino Finisterre is the one that catches people out, because it is a genuine, waymarked, well walked Camino that happens to run in the opposite direction. It starts at the cathedral. Walking it earns you a different certificate, the Fisterrana, from Finisterre rather than from Santiago. The Camino Lebaniego is a pilgrimage to the Lignum Crucis at Santo Toribio de Liébana and has its own Jubilee and its own document. The Camino Mozárabe is a long feeder route that ends where it meets the Vía de la Plata, and what qualifies you there is the Plata's own final stretch, which is in the table above.

What the walk in actually costs you

The distances in that table are close to each other. What they ask of you is not. Galicia is not flat, and the last week of every one of these routes spends its time going up and down small steep hills rather than along a valley.

• Vía de la Plata, from Ourense: 2,336 m of climbing over 109.9 km, in 6 stages.
• Camino Francés, from Sarria: 1,848 m of climbing over 114.7 km, in 5 stages.
• Camino Inglés, from Ferrol: 1,802 m of climbing over 110.1 km, in 6 stages.
• Camino Invierno, from Chantada: 1,800 m of climbing over 105.0 km, in 5 stages.
• Camino Portugués, from Valença: 1,678 m of climbing over 120.8 km, in 6 stages.
• Camino Primitivo, from Lugo: 1,618 m of climbing over 100.0 km, in 5 stages.
• Camino del Norte, from A Castiñeira: 1,367 m of climbing over 101.7 km, in 4 stages.

That spread is the actual decision. The distances differ by a few kilometres. The climbing differs by a great deal more, and it is the part people do not look at until they are in it. Every stage of every one of these is plotted in the elevation explorer, profile by profile, if you would rather see the shape of the week than read a total.

How this was measured, and what it cannot tell you

Distances are taken along the route tracks the app navigates by, not from a guidebook, and the ascent is accumulated from elevation samples along the same tracks with a noise floor applied so that GPS jitter does not turn into imaginary climbing. It is the same method and the same source as the elevation figures for the full routes, which is deliberate: a page that disagrees with another page on this site about a number is worse than a page that says nothing.

What it cannot tell you is what the Pilgrim's Office will decide. Route lengths are not a settled fact. Guidebooks disagree with each other by several kilometres on every one of these routes, waymarking is re-routed, and variants exist that are all equally the Camino. Treat these figures as good to about a kilometre, treat anything inside 3 km of the bar as unresolved, and if you are close enough to be asking, start further out.

So where should you actually start

If you want the busiest and best served week, it is the Camino Francés from Sarria, and the crowds people complain about are real. If you want the same distance with a fraction of the traffic, the table above has six other answers, and the Camino Primitivo from Lugo is the shortest of them. None of them is a lesser Camino. The certificate does not record which one you walked or how long you were on it.

Common questions

Where do the last 100 km of the Camino de Santiago start?

There is no single answer, because it depends on the route. On the seven routes that end at the cathedral the last town you can start from and still clear 100 km runs from Lugo on the Camino Primitivo at 100.0 km to Valença on the Camino Portugués at 120.8 km. Sarria is the famous one only because the Camino Francés is the busiest route, not because it is the rule.

Is Sarria exactly 100 km from Santiago?

No. Measured along the route we navigate by, Sarria is 114.7 km from the cathedral, which leaves comfortable margin over the 100 km the Compostela requires. The next stage town in, Portomarín, is 92.7 km and does not qualify on its own.

Which route gives the shortest qualifying walk?

The Camino Primitivo, starting at Lugo: 100.0 km over 5 of our stages. That is the smallest amount of walking that still earns a Compostela on that route, though several other routes are within a few kilometres of it.

Can I walk the last 100 km of the Camino Finisterre?

No, and not because it is too short. The Camino Finisterre starts in Santiago and walks away from the cathedral, so no part of it is an approach to Santiago at all. The Camino Mozárabe ends at Mérida where it joins the Vía de la Plata, and the Camino Lebaniego ends at Santo Toribio de Liébana, which is a different pilgrimage with its own certificate. Three of the ten routes cannot answer this question.

Do I need two stamps a day for the last 100 km?

Two stamps a day is the rule the Pilgrim's Office applies over the final stretch, and it is also the single most garbled rule on the Camino. What counts, what does not, and the exception nobody explains properly are all in our guide to getting the Compostela rather than restated here.

How accurate are these distances?

They are measured along our own tracks, sampled the same way the elevation figures are, and they are honest to about a kilometre. A variant, a detour around a closed bridge or a different guidebook's line moves them. That matters on the routes inside 3 km of the bar, where our measurement genuinely cannot tell you the answer and neither can anyone else's. Start one town further out on those.

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