Camino blogs and websites with information that works

Search for "Camino de Santiago blog" and you get hundreds of pages, a good share of them agencies selling the trip or rewrites of other guides. To separate what people actually use we did what we did for the page on how to book an albergue: read the public archive of r/CaminoDeSantiago, the biggest English-language Camino forum, and count. Since January 2023 that is 11,804 threads and 159,354 comments. For each site we counted how many different people name or link it, not how many times it comes up, so that one enthusiastic user or the author themselves cannot inflate the number. Then we opened every one of them on 28 September 2026 to see whether it is still alive, what it offers and how it is funded. Thirteen made it.

The thirteen at a glance

The number tells you how much a site circulates among pilgrims who write in English, not how good it is, which is why Spanish-language sites score lower than they deserve. Even so, the top of the list is Spanish, with almost twice the count of the runner-up.

Guides and planning tools

Gronze

The forum's default answer to almost any practical question: 431 different people recommend it, more than any other site. For each route it gives the stages with elevation profiles and distances, and for each town the list of albergues, guesthouses and hotels with phone number and price, including the small villages between stages that other guides leave out. It has been online since 2006, is run by its founder, Joan Fiol, with a team that includes the historian Antón Pombo, and has its own forum and a free app, Gronze Maps. The accommodation pages are edited daily: its sitemap shows changes on 27 September 2026. It is in Spanish; people who don't read Spanish tend to use it through a browser translator. How it is funded: it is a company, Gronze Caminos S.L., and the booking buttons on its listings are Booking.com affiliate links. The albergue's phone number sits right next to them, and as we explain on the booking page, that is usually the better route.

Wise Pilgrim

Second most cited, with 242 people. It is written by Michael Matynka, who has spent 25 years around the Camino and lives in Galicia, and it covers some fifteen routes town by town: albergues, services, what has changed. It has one deliberate quirk: it does not set stages. It gives you the towns and you decide where to stop. The website is free; the apps and printed guides are partly paid (the Camino Francés app is €4.99 on the App Store). It is a one-person company, Wise Pilgrim SL, and asks you to write in if you find a closed albergue or a changed price. Its app was updated on 23 September 2026 and, according to its author, the website runs on the same data. English and six more languages.

Godesalco

A one-author site in its twenty-fifth year: Arturo J. Murias has run it since February 2002. Its strongest piece is the planner (for example, the Camino Francés one), which splits the route into stages by the distance you want to walk and shows what accommodation there is at each stop, and it covers routes few others do, such as the French ones (Via Podiensis, Lemovicensis, Turonensis, Tolosana). It keeps a public changelog: in September 2026 it updated the variants of the Via Lemovicensis and in May it added geolocation to its maps. No ads; it runs on donations. Spanish and English. If you are only walking Sarria to Santiago, our planner does the same in more detail for those five or six days; for long routes, Godesalco goes where we don't.

Camino Weather

A tool rather than a blog, and one the forum keeps recommending year after year (31 people). You pick a route, a section and your dates, and it shows what the weather was like on that stretch on those days over past years, with the raw data underneath. It currently covers 2009 to 2025. It is a personal project, with no named author on the site, that takes requests for routes and features. It does not replace the week's forecast: it helps you choose the month. For Santiago itself, see the city's weather month by month.

Winter albergues (Aprinca)

A single, very plain page that the forum passes around every autumn: the list of albergues on the Camino Francés that stay open between November and February, when many close. It goes up on 1 November and is updated through the winter; the latest version is from 28 February 2026 and the next one will cover 1 November 2026 to 28 February 2027. It has a Facebook group ("Aprinca Albergues Invierno") and a contact email. One caveat from people who have used it: it is not complete in the cities, where there is more on offer than it lists. We could not confirm who maintains it, because the domain's home page blocks automated visits. If you are walking in those months, what closes and when is on our page about the Camino season.

Pilgrim blogs

Stingy Nomads

The most recommended personal blog on the list, with 73 people. It is written by Campbell and Alya Louw, a couple who travel full time and walked the seven main Camino routes in two years. Their stage-by-stage guides, with distances and accommodation, are what gets linked most, especially those for the Portuguese Coastal route and Lisbon to Porto, updated on 17 September 2026. They have a resources page. How it is funded: advertising and affiliate links, disclosed in their policy, plus reader donations. English.

Lotus Eaters Travel

Just makes the cut, with 10 different people. John and Emma are a couple of English travel writers who have walked several routes and write them up with daily stages and, harder to find, honest verdicts on what they liked and didn't. The latest, from 27 August 2026, is on the Camino Mozárabe. They use affiliate links and say so. The blog is not only about the Camino: they write about other destinations too. English.

Forums and associations

Camino de Santiago Forum

The go-to English-language forum, sent people's way by 194 different Redditors. Its value is the archive: nearly any question, however odd, has already been asked there and answered by someone who just got back. It is busy every day; on 28 September 2026 there were threads opened that same morning, one about a new albergue in Ambasmestas. How it is funded: it is run by Ivar, who also runs Casa Ivar in Santiago (luggage storage, a credencial shop and organised Caminos), and the forum shows ads except to donating members. English.

American Pilgrims on the Camino

The US pilgrims' association, recommended by 59 people. It issues the credencial to pilgrims setting off from the States, runs local chapters across the country, trains volunteer hospitaleros, runs a pilgrim welcome service in Ribadiso and publishes the magazine La Concha, whose latest issue is from summer 2026. If you live in the US, start here. English.

Confraternity of Saint James

The British association (29 people). It has a library and route guides, and runs two albergues on the Camino: Refugio Gaucelmo in Rabanal del Camino and the albergue at Miraz, on the Camino del Norte. Its news is among the quickest in English: on 24 September 2026 it reported, citing the Cathedral, that the pilgrim Mass moves to the church of San Agustín from 16 October while the high altar is restored. English.

Canadian Company of Pilgrims

The Canadian association (15 people). Credencial, local chapters, volunteer hospitaleros and a pilgrim welcome service in Lugo staffed by volunteers. It keeps a well-maintained links page and a seasonal newsletter; the latest is from summer 2026. English.

Official sources and services

Pilgrim's Office

The website of the Cathedral's Pilgrim Reception Office: Compostela requirements, the credencial, the distance certificate and the official arrival statistics (74 people link it, almost always for the statistics). Its news moves slowly, the latest item is from January 2026, but it is the source of the rules. Watch the name: pilgrim.es, which people sometimes confuse with it, is a travel agency. We read the statistics daily on our statistics page, and the requirements are summed up on our Compostela page.

El Camino con Correos

This is the Spanish Post Office's commercial website for the Camino, and we say so up front: it sells stage-to-stage bag transfer (Paq Mochila), left-luggage by the Obradoiro and shipping for suitcases and bikes, including from Porto. It is here because 40 people cite it for exactly that, and because its blog posts route advice often; the latest entry is from 28 September 2026. Ten languages. How bag transfer works, and the alternatives, are on our luggage transfer page.

How we chose

Two conditions, both backed by data. First: at least ten different people recommend or link it on r/CaminoDeSantiago between January 2023 and 25 August 2026, not counting our own account or accounts that look like the site's own. Second: it has something dated in the last twelve months, seen on 28 September 2026 (a post, a page changed in the sitemap, an app release). We also checked that the information is original rather than rewritten, and that it is not buried under affiliate links; when a site earns affiliate commission or sells something, its entry says so.

Nobody pays to be here and nobody asked to be included. We have been in touch with several of these sites at some point to introduce santiago.es; that does not change the criteria, which are the same for all.

We will review the list with the same method. If a site stops being updated, it goes; if another starts circulating, it comes in.