CaminantesCamino de Santiago movies and books, on the real map
By August Frederik Kramer · Last updated 23 October 2026
Tom walks from Saint-Jean to Santiago, then on to the sea at Muxía: 855.8 km, 39 days on our plans.
Five stories
855.8km on our track
39days on our plan
10,446m of climbing to Santiago
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Four of the best-known Camino stories set off from the same town. The Way, Hape Kerkeling’s Ich bin dann mal weg, Checco Zalone’s Buen camino and the documentary Walking the Camino all leave Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and walk the Camino Francés: on our measured track that is 768.6 km to Santiago, 36 days on our plan and 10,446 m of climbing. The fifth, a Korean TV show, never walks at all.
Four stories, one road
Films need a beginning, and the Camino Francés has the best one: a French town at the foot of the Pyrenees and a first day straight over them. So the stories keep choosing it. On our track the Francés is 768.6 km from Saint-Jean to the cathedral in Santiago, with 10,446 m of climbing and a high point of 1,505 m. Our plan walks it in 36 days. Whatever the film shows in two hours, that is the walk it stands for.
The Way (2010)
Emilio Estevez wrote and directed The Way and cast his father, Martin Sheen, as Tom Avery, an American eye doctor whose son dies in the Pyrenees in a storm on the Camino. Tom goes to Saint-Jean to bring the body home and instead walks the Camino with his son’s ashes, falling in with a Dutchman, a Canadian and an Irish writer. In Santiago the story does not stop: the four walk on to Muxía, where Tom scatters the last of the ashes into the sea. On our plans that is 768.6 km to Santiago and 87.2 km more to Muxía in 3 days: 855.8 km in all.
Where The Way ends: Santiago to Muxía.
Ich bin dann mal weg: Hape Kerkeling’s Camino
In 2001 the German comedian Hape Kerkeling walked the Camino Francés from Saint-Jean to Santiago. His book about it, Ich bin dann mal weg (2006), was number one on the Spiegel non-fiction list for more than 100 weeks and has sold more than 5 million copies. In 2015 Julia von Heinz made it into a film, with Devid Striesow as Kerkeling. The road is the one on the map: 768.6 km and 36 days on our plan.
Buen camino (2025): Checco Zalone
Checco Zalone’s Buen camino, directed by Gennaro Nunziante, opened in Italian cinemas on Christmas Day 2025 and became the highest-grossing film ever shown in Italy: 76.6 million euros and 9.6 million tickets. Zalone plays a rich heir whose daughter, Cristal, runs away to walk the Camino; he follows, and at San Fermín in Pamplona the bulls wreck his Ferrari. Pamplona is 67.5 km from Saint-Jean, the end of day 3 on our plan. The film was shot along the Francés, from Saint-Jean through Puente la Reina and Burgos to the cathedral in Santiago.
Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago (2013)
Lydia B. Smith’s documentary follows real pilgrims on the Camino Francés. Her crew reached Saint-Jean on 22 April 2009 and finished filming in Santiago that June. Nobody in it is acting; the blisters, the arguments and the arrival are the ones that happened. It is the closest a film gets to the 768.6 km on our map.
Korean Hostel in Spain (2019)
In 스페인 하숙 (2019, tvN) Cha Seung-won, Yoo Hae-jin and Bae Jung-nam did not walk the Camino: they kept an albergue in Villafranca del Bierzo and cooked Korean food for passing pilgrims, for nine days. Wikipedia puts the town 187 km from Santiago. On our track it is km 587.3 from Saint-Jean, with 181.3 km left: day 28 of our 36, with 9 days and 3,236 m of climbing still ahead, O Cebreiro first. The figures differ because guides measure different lines; ours is the one every page of this site uses.
The town of the Korean hostel: Villafranca del Bierzo.
Know these words before your Camino. Spanish is preparation, the same as boots and stages. Try the free topic
The books behind them
Two books came first. Paulo Coelho walked the Camino in 1986 and wrote O Diário de um Mago (1987), in English The Pilgrimage, a year before The Alchemist. Shirley MacLaine’s The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit came out in 2000, and Kerkeling carried it on his own walk the next year. Neither is a route guide, and neither tries to be.
Walking it yourself
The films cut the first day short; the road does not. Day 1 from Saint-Jean climbs over the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles, and the 36 days after it are the ones on the map. If one of these stories is why you are here, start with the distances and with which way to go.
The first day, the one Tom’s son never finished: Saint-Jean to Roncesvalles. How far it really is, route by route: how long is the Camino de Santiago. Not sure the Francés is yours? Which Camino route to walk.
Sources: every distance, day and climb is ours, measured on the Caminantes app’s track and stage plan of the Camino Francés and the Muxía way, the same figures as the stage pages of this site. Map: OpenStreetMap (ODbL) and Natural Earth. The stories: The Way, Ich bin dann mal weg, the book and the film, Buen camino (box office from Cinetel, as reported there) and its locations, Walking the Camino, Korean Hostel in Spain, The Pilgrimage and The Camino.
Common questions
Where does The Way start and end?
In Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, at the foot of the Pyrenees, and in Muxía on the Atlantic coast, after Santiago. On our plans that is 855.8 km in 39 days.
Which Camino did Hape Kerkeling walk?
The Camino Francés, in 2001, from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago: 768.6 km on our track.
Is Buen camino filmed on the real Camino?
Yes, on the Camino Francés: Saint-Jean, Pamplona, Puente la Reina, Burgos and the cathedral in Santiago.
Where was the Korean hostel in Spanish Inn?
In Villafranca del Bierzo, 181.3 km from Santiago on our track: 9 days before the end on our plan.
Keep reading
Two weeks on the Camino: where to start on every route
Pick the days you can walk and how far you like to walk in one, and see the furthest start on all seven routes into Santiago, with the km and the climbing, from our measured stages.
The Camino shell and the yellow arrow
Why pilgrims carry a scallop shell, who painted the first yellow arrows, and which of the two you can steer by. Then read five junctions yourself and see how many you get right.
What is the Camino de Santiago? Twelve centuries, measured
What the Camino is, why people walk it, and its whole history in ten pictures you scrub through, from a tomb in the woods to the next Holy Year. Then: history or legend?
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