The 36 stages of the Camino Francés, drawn to scale

By August Frederik Kramer · Last updated 27 September 2026

The Camino Francés is 768.6 km in 36 stages, and the average stage is 21.4 km: a half marathon, with a backpack, every day for five weeks. That is the least interesting thing about it. Day 1 climbs more than four Eiffel Towers. Day 21 climbs 17 m, less than a 6-storey building. And of the 241,998 people who finished the Francés in 2025, two in three walked only the last 5 stages.

The whole route on one line

Here is the Francés drawn like a metro map. Distances along each row are to scale, and the colours are the three parts pilgrims have always divided it into. The line is as thick as the number of people on it.

It starts thin: 30,337 people set out from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in 2025. A few thousand more join in León, Ponferrada and O Cebreiro, and for four weeks the line only grows slowly. Then it reaches Sarria and becomes 4 times as thick overnight, because 161,922 people start there. If the last week of your Camino felt like a different walk, this is why.

Body, mind, soul: does the old saying hold?

Ask anyone who has walked it and you will hear the Francés has three parts. The body is Saint-Jean to Burgos, where your legs complain. The mind is the meseta, Burgos to León, flat and endless, where your head does the work. The soul is León to Santiago, where it all starts to mean something. It is a nice story. Here it is, measured.

The body is real. 13 days and 282.9 km, 37% of the distance, and 47% of all the climbing on the route: 17.2 m of ascent for every kilometre.

The mind is the part the saying gets exactly right. The meseta is 23% of the walk and only 10% of the climbing, 5.9 m per kilometre. For 9 days the ground hardly moves, and there is nothing to do but think.

The soul is where the saying misleads. It sounds gentle. It is not: León to Santiago holds 43% of the climbing, almost as much as the body, with the route’s highest point (1,505 m) and the climb to O Cebreiro both in it. And it is where the people are, as the line map above shows.

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Every day, drawn at the same scale

Most stage profiles are drawn so every day fills its box, which makes a stroll look like an Alp. These are all drawn on one scale: the same height from the route’s lowest ground to its highest, the same width for the same kilometres. Look at the shapes before you read the numbers. Altogether the Francés climbs 10,446 m, which is Everest from sea level and then another 1,597 m, and it does not climb it evenly.

Day 1 is a wall. 1,351 m up in 25.9 km, from Saint-Jean over the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles. That is more than four Eiffel Towers stacked, on your first morning.

Day 21 is a floor. From El Burgo Ranero to Mansilla de las Mulas the path climbs 17 m in 18.9 km, less than a 6-storey building. It is the flattest day on the route and it is in the middle of the meseta.

Day 26 is the one your knees remember. It crosses the highest ground on the Camino, 1,505 m near the Cruz de Ferro, then drops 982 m into Molinaseca: almost three Eiffel Towers, downhill. Pilgrims worry about the climbs; the descents are what break toenails.

The hardest day, by a formula from 1892

In 1892 a Scottish mountaineer, William Naismith, wrote down a rule that walkers still use: allow an hour for every 5 km, plus an hour for every 600 m of climbing. Which means 600 m of up is worth 5 km of flat. Add the climbing to the distance that way and every stage gets an honest length: how far it walks, not how far it is.

By that measure day 1 is not 25.9 km. It walks like 37.2 km, which makes it the hardest day on the Francés by a distance, harder than day 8, the longest stage on paper at 29.3 km. The five hardest days:

1. Day 1, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles: 25.9 km that walk like 37.2 km
2. Day 8, Logroño to Nájera: 29.3 km that walk like 32.4 km
3. Day 34, Palas de Rei to Arzúa: 28.3 km that walk like 32.1 km
4. Day 26, Santa Marina de Somoza to Molinaseca: 27.4 km that walk like 31.5 km
5. Day 7, Los Arcos to Logroño: 27.8 km that walk like 30.7 km

Naismith was writing for fit Victorian gentlemen on Scottish hills, so read his hours as a comparison, not a timetable. What the rule is good at is ranking, and the ranking is the useful part: it tells you which evenings to plan short.

The five days two in three people walk

The Pilgrim’s Office counted 241,998 people arriving in Santiago on the Francés in 2025. 161,922 of them started in Sarria: 67%, two in three. For every pilgrim who started in Saint-Jean, 5.3 started in Sarria. The reason is the rule: the Compostela asks for the last 100 km on foot, and Sarria sits just outside it, 114.4 km out, with a railway station.

Here is the part nobody mentions. Those 5 stages are 114.4 km, 15% of the route, and they hold 18% of its climbing: 1,854 m, more than all 9 days of the meseta put together (1,066 m). Galicia rolls. If you are walking from Sarria, you are not doing the easy bit of the Camino. You are doing the busiest bit, and a hilly one.

The busiest bit has the beds to match: the last 100 km has 140 places to sleep, 1.4 per kilometre against 0.8 on the route as a whole. If you are coming for the full five weeks instead, where you start the Francés changes the climbing more than you would think.

The five days from Sarria as a trip of their own, with where to sleep and when it is busiest: Sarria to Santiago.

All 36 stages

Every stage with its distance, climbing, descent, Naismith length and the number of places to sleep along it. The stage ends are generated from the route itself rather than copied from a guidebook, so they will not match every book, and they are a starting point, not an instruction. The Camino Francés route page has the same plan with the app to walk it.

Places to sleep: albergues, guest houses and refuges within 300 m of the track, from OpenStreetMap. Hotels are not counted.

Where the numbers come from

Distances and climbing are measured from the route’s own GPS track, sampled every 100 m against the SRTM elevation model, with rises under 3 m ignored so that sensor noise does not turn into imaginary hills. Places to sleep are from OpenStreetMap, the same snapshot as our map of where the beds are.

The crowd is the Pilgrim’s Office count for 2025, by the town people said they started in. The office names its twenty biggest start towns and six of them are on the Francés. The other 26,332 Francés pilgrims started in towns too small to make the list, each under 3,646, so the line on the map is a floor: the real line is a little thicker, and nowhere near thick enough to change the story at Sarria.

The comparisons use a half marathon of 21.1 km, Everest at 8,849 m, the Eiffel Tower at 330 m and a storey at 3 m. Every figure on this page is computed from those files when the site is built, not typed in.

Common questions

How many stages is the Camino Francés?

On our plan, 36 stages over 768.6 km from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago, averaging 21.4 km a day. Other plans split it differently; the number depends on where you choose to sleep, not on the route.

What is the hardest stage of the Camino Francés?

Day 1, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles: 1,351 m of climbing in 25.9 km. By Naismith’s rule it walks like 37.2 km, more than any other day, including the longest stage on paper (day 8, 29.3 km).

What is the longest stage of the Camino Francés?

Day 8, Logroño to Nájera, at 29.3 km on our plan. The shortest is day 11 into Villafranca Montes de Oca, at 16.1 km.

How many stages are there from Sarria?

5 stages and 114.4 km, which is what two in three Francés pilgrims walk: 161,922 of 241,998 in 2025. They are not flat. They climb 1,854 m, more than the whole meseta.

Is the meseta really flat?

Yes, measurably. Burgos to León is 23% of the route and 10% of its climbing, 5.9 m per kilometre against 17.2 in the first part. The flattest day on the route, day 21, climbs 17 m.

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