Camino del Norte: the 36 stages, the real climb and the boats

Updated 25 August 2026.

Most people reach the Camino del Norte by elimination: they want the Francés without the crowds, and they see a line that runs along the coast. The coast is real, and the sea views are the most constant of any route. What is not real is the idea of a stroll. In total the Norte climbs more than twice what the Primitivo climbs, it has four water crossings you have to solve yourself, and an albergue network so uneven that the problem is never how many beds the village has, but that the next albergue is fifteen kilometres further on. This guide is about that, with the numbers in front of you.

The short answer

It is between 820 and 831 km from Irún, split into 36 stages to Santiago: 34 as far as Arzúa, where the Norte joins the Camino Francés, and two more along the final stretch shared with everyone walking in from Sarria. With one rest day a week that comes to five or six weeks. In 2025 it was walked by 21,521 pilgrims, 4.05% of the total, according to the official dashboard of the Oficina de Acogida al Peregrino, the Pilgrim's Office: it is the sixth busiest route, behind the Primitivo.

The Camino del Norte is not growing, which is the opposite of what you are told

The line the tourism sites repeat is that the Norte is gaining ground among people escaping the crowds on the Francés. The official data says the opposite, and it has been saying it for nine years. In 2016 the Norte was 6.22% of all pilgrims; in 2025 it was 4.05%; so far in 2026, 3.81%. It is not falling in absolute numbers: it is growing far more slowly than the Camino as a whole, and in 2026 not even that.

The cleanest comparison is like for like: from January to July, the Norte went from 11,478 pilgrims in 2025 to 11,241 in 2026, down 2.1%, while the Camino as a whole was up 5.5%. Anyone looking for solitude finds more of it on the Norte today than five years ago. Anyone expecting a route in fashion will not find one.

Sixteen thousand metres of climbing: the Norte against the Primitivo

The Primitivo has the reputation for being hard, and it has earned it day by day. But what wears you down on a five-week walk is the cumulative climb, and there the two are not close. Adding up the stage table on this page, the Norte accumulates 16,239 metres of ascent and 15,757 of descent. The Primitivo, from Oviedo to Melide, accumulates 6,937.

The honest way to put it: the Primitivo is harder per day and the Norte is harder in total. People who come to the Norte from the Francés get their fright in the first week. The seven stages from Irún to Bilbao are 147.3 km with 4,322 metres of ascent, which is 29.3 metres per kilometre — steeper even than the Primitivo average. After that the profile calms down, but never completely.

The 36 stages, with the climb on each one

Distances, ascent, descent and walking time from Gronze, the reference nearly everyone planning in Spanish uses. Stages 35 and 36 are already Camino Francés: you share the path and the albergues with people walking from Sarria.

Two honest warnings about this table, because we would rather say them than hide them. On stage 34, Sobrado–Arzúa, Gronze prints the two elevation figures in the reverse order to the rest of its entries; we have taken 337 m as the ascent for consistency with the profile, but it is not confirmed. And stage 8 has a flat variant along the estuary of 13.0 km that swallows 6.2 of the official 19.2: if you take it, the total drops.

The five sections that actually cost you

They are not the longest ones, and that is the surprising part.

1. Deba – Markina-Xemein (23.3 km, 817 m of ascent)

This is the stage with the most ascent on the whole route. The Arno pass is 300 metres of climb in barely 3 kilometres. Gronze describes it as the loneliest stage of the Camino del Norte, with almost nothing open in between: 15.6 km between Olatz and Markina, with a single fountain on the way, at Arnoate, and it is not drinking water. The bar in Olatz opens at 10 am and closes on Mondays, so on a Monday the real gap from Laranga is 20.2 km. And from the Calvario chapel onwards you do not see the sea again until Portugalete: anyone who came for the coastal photographs takes the disappointment here.

2. The Jaizkibel climb, on day one (24.7 km, 630 m)

First day out and it is already leg-breaking ground over Jaizkibel and Ulía. There are 11.6 km with nothing open at all, from the Guadalupe sanctuary to Pasajes de San Juan, and the only fountain is at the start of that gap. At the end there is a climb of some 312 steps up to the La Plata lighthouse. The mountain variant along the ridge goes over the Allerru at 547 metres, and Gronze itself calls that one hard and lonely.

3. Castro Urdiales – Laredo (30.5 km, 712 m)

Up and down all day, the second biggest climb of the route and long with it. The warning here is not about legs but about traffic: leaving Cerdigo you cross the main road on a three-lane straight, with no crossing and fast cars. Gronze specifically advises against the shortcut along the hard shoulder of the N-634, which saves 5.6 km.

4. Baamonde – Sobrado dos Monxes (39.8 km)

The longest stage of the Camino, and Gronze says so flatly: too long for ordinary mortals. It opens with 12.2 km to the first bar, at Seixón, and there is another gap of 9.1 km later on. A Cabana has a Xunta albergue, but no shop and no bar in the village. The alternative is to break the stage by sleeping in Miraz, where the Confraternity of Saint James albergue has 20 beds on a donation basis and takes no bookings.

5. Mondoñedo – Abadín (16.6 km, 625 m)

The most concentrated climb on the route: 625 metres of ascent over 16.6 km, close to 38 metres per kilometre, hauling from 140 to 560 metres of altitude. And as much as 13.2 km with nothing listed, from Maariz to Gontán. Gronze advises against the main hill route, 3.6 km shorter, if you are alone or the weather is bad: empty country, loose cattle and frequent fog.

Outside those five, what grinds you down is tarmac. Santillana del Mar–Comillas is on asphalt almost the whole way; Santander–Santillana runs along pavements and pedestrian lanes through built-up areas; and Gijón–Avilés is one of the least rewarding sections of the entire Camino, between motorways and steelworks. One safety warning with a name on it: on Avilés–Muros de Nalón, the official route through Piedras Blancas forces you to walk a kilometre along the AS-320 with no hard shoulder and heavy traffic. Gronze calls it very dangerous and recommends the variant via San Martín de Laspra.

The fork with the Primitivo is not at Sebrayo

Almost everyone says the Norte and the Primitivo separate at Sebrayo, and they do not. The physical marker, with two scallop shells on it, is at Casquita, a hamlet beside the San Blas chapel, at kilometre 3.7 of the stage out of Villaviciosa. Straight on takes you towards Gijón on the Norte; left takes you towards Oviedo on the Primitivo.

The confusion has an explanation: Sebrayo is on the previous stage and has an albergue, so people sleep there and decide there, but the sign is 5.6 km further on. Sebrayo is also a tiny hamlet with nothing permanent open, 10 beds at €5 and a shop-in-a-van that comes round late in the afternoon.

The gap between the two main options is 21 to 27 km and one or two days, in the Primitivo's favour. Today most people go via Oviedo, to the point that Gronze itself lists the linking stages as little walked. What you gain by staying on the Norte is the western Asturian coast and considerably fewer people from there on. What you pay is that the continuation opens with Villaviciosa–Gijón, 29.8 km and 655 metres of ascent, with two ramps of 340 and 200 metres and an entry into Gijón that Gronze calls a muddle because the waymarking is poor.

The Oviedo variant: 837-849 km

There is a third option almost nobody publishes: go to Oviedo and come back to the Norte. You do not take it in Oviedo, you take it at the same Casquita fork, turning left but hooking back to the coast at Avilés. The sequence is Villaviciosa–Pola de Siero (26.0 km, 541 m), Pola de Siero–Oviedo (17.3 km, 175 m) and Oviedo–Avilés (29.0 km, 591 m).

Seeing Oviedo and returning to the Norte costs about 17.5 km extra compared with going straight on via Gijón, which puts the total for the walk between 837 and 849 km depending on how you count. It is the figure that appears in no comparison table anywhere. Against it: Pola de Siero–Oviedo is mostly on asphalt, with some 5 km of industrial estate before the old town, and the link has few services on the way; the bar-restaurant at La Carcabada closes on Thursdays and the one at Vega de Sariego on Tuesdays.

The four water crossings, and which ones are really boats

This is the part of the Norte that gets explained worst. There are four points where the Camino meets water, and only three of them are crossed by boat. None of them is blocked by the tide, but one does depend on the depth of the channel, and that is the part nobody tells you.

The Laredo one is the other case with a catch: it does not run in winter and you have to make the detour via Colindres. The sources disagree on both the season and the price (the operator says €2.50 and publishes no calendar; Laredo tourism says €2.00 and mid-March to mid-November), so in March or November it is worth phoning. And the Ribadeo estuary, the way into Galicia, has no boat and does not depend on the tide: you walk across the Puente de los Santos, along a narrow pedestrian lane between the motorway and the water. Gronze calls it deplorable and extraordinary, but notes that it is not dangerous because it is protected by barriers and a railing. Anyone who cannot face it has the historic variant via Vegadeo, inland and well waymarked.

Where there is nothing, and where there is no bed

Gronze publishes one structural figure worth having before you leave: from Irún to Arzúa the Norte passes through 133 places with services, one every 5.9 km on average. The average lies, as averages do. These are the gaps that are actually long, all of them checked stage by stage.

And a negative result that is also useful for planning: the three long Cantabrian stages (Portugalete–Castro 32.1 km, Castro–Laredo 30.5 and Santander–Santillana 36.3) have no gap longer than 10 km. They are hard because of the distance and the tarmac, not because of food and water.

Beds: the problem is not capacity, it is the distance between albergues

On the Camino Francés, if an albergue is full you carry on to the next village. On the Norte, the next albergue can be fifteen kilometres away. That is the mechanism, and it is not the one the forums describe.

Five things in that table that change how you plan:

• Zarautz has no albergue and is not going to get one. The public Ebro Etxea is not reopening: the beds were moved to Zumaia. What is left are surf hostels at €25-29. And the plan B, Getaria 4 km away, adds only 22 beds across its two places. Zarautz and Getaria together give you no cushion.
• Lezama is the sharpest bottleneck in the Basque Country: 10 beds, and only from 1 June to 30 September. It is the natural end of the stage out of Gernika, so it is the only destination of the day.
• Ribadesella has no albergue. The one at San Esteban de Leces is 5.1 km from the centre, uphill, in a hamlet with nothing open. If you sleep there you are not having dinner in Ribadesella.
• Two municipal albergues that no longer exist and that people still look for: Santillana del Mar closed in 2023 with no reopening date, and Comillas in 2019. Comillas now has only a private one at €23-27.
• The cheap albergues that are left are exactly the ones that fill up. Deba at €8, Sebrayo at €5, Güemes and Miraz on donation. And none of those four takes bookings.

The villages most often reported full on the forums are Deba (first by a distance), Markina, San Sebastián, Castro Urdiales, Islares, Gernika, Gijón and Luarca. The budget goes up too: in the Basque Country private albergues run from €22 to €27 on average, against the €10 of a Galician public one, and in San Sebastián in summer without a booking you will be asked more than €50 for a bunk. That is the real reason the Norte works out dearer than the Francés, and it is concentrated in the first three weeks.

The last 100 km trap

This is the worst-answered question on the whole Camino del Norte, and the answers repeated most often on the forums are simply false: there are threads recommending you start in Lugo, which is not on the Norte at all, it is on the Primitivo. These are the real distances to Santiago, worked out from the stage table on this page.

Baamonde has a physical 100 km marker, a hostal called Km101 and a regional railway station, so it works perfectly well as a starting point. Even so, the official statistics say that more people start in Vilalba (11.3%) than in Baamonde (4.1%), nearly three times as many, very probably because the 39.8 km stage out of Baamonde frightens them off.

It rains, and we can tell you how much

The Norte is pure oceanic climate: Atlantic fronts hit the Cordillera Cantábrica, which sits right against the sea, the air rises and unloads. The meseta the Francés crosses is in the lee. Translated into rain days, using AEMET normals for 1981-2010, that looks like this:

In August, the busiest month for pilgrims, San Sebastián gets rain on almost four times as many days as León. Over the year it is 141 days against 75. The dry months in the north are July and August, and even then it rains one day in three in Gipuzkoa. October and November are the worst. Gronze sums up the practical consequence well: in the wet, mud is a more serious problem than the climbs. If you want the detail for the end of the walk, it is in our guide to the weather in Santiago.

Who walks the Norte

The profile is different too, and there are two figures published nowhere else because you have to cross-filter the official dashboard to get them.

The first: the Norte is the genuinely French camino, in the sense of nationality. The French are 5.6% of pilgrims on the Norte against 1.9% of the Camino as a whole, nearly triple their usual weight. It makes sense: Bayonne and Hendaye are the way in. Behind them come the Dutch (2.4% against 1.3%) and the Germans (7.9% against 4.6%). Italians, by contrast, are barely over-represented, and the Portuguese, Irish and Brazilians are conspicuously absent: people who arrive via the Portugués do not touch the Norte.

The second: the Norte is the male route. It runs 56.7% men to 43.3% women, the exact reverse of the Camino as a whole, where women have been the majority for years at 53.4%. And 10.8% do it by bicycle, well above the average.

Finally, where people start: only one in four sets off from Irún (25.4%). After that come Vilalba (11.3%), Ribadeo (9.5%), Bilbao (6.0%), San Sebastián (5.3%), Gijón (5.0%), Santander (4.5%) and Baamonde (4.1%). The whole Norte is a minority even within the Norte.