Camino Primitivo: stages, difficulty and starting from Lugo

Updated 23 August 2026.

This is the original one. In the 9th century King Alfonso II walked out of Oviedo to see the newly discovered tomb for himself, and the route he took is the one now called the Primitivo. Twelve hundred years later it is still the least changed of them all: Asturian mountains, Galician mountains and very few people. It is also, by some distance, the one that asks most of your legs, and that is the part almost no guide puts numbers on.

The short answer

It is about 313 km from Oviedo over 14 days: eleven to Melide, where it joins the Camino Francés, and three more into Santiago along the stretch we already cover in our route comparison. In 2025 it was walked by 21,521 pilgrims, 4.05% of the total, according to Pilgrim's Office figures reported in the press. That makes it the fifth busiest route, a long way behind the Francés.

The eleven stages from Oviedo to Melide

Distances and elevation from Gronze, the Spanish-language reference that most pilgrims plan with. The climb column is the one to read: eight of the eleven go over 500 metres of ascent and three go over 850.

Stages 5a and 5b are the same day by two different ways: you pick one, you do not walk both. And one honest note about stage 6, because we would rather say it than hide it: the Gronze entry gives 1,017 m of ascent and 663 m of descent, but the text of that same stage describes dropping from 1,040 to 210 metres in 8.2 km. The two do not add up and we suspect the labels are swapped at source. Treat them as indicative until we can check on the ground.

The Hospitales route, and when not to take it

This is the stage in all the photographs: hours along a ridge between 1,000 and 1,250 metres, past the ruins of three medieval pilgrim hospitals (Paradiella, 15th century; Fonfaraón, 13th to 14th; Valparaíso, 14th). The fork is clearly waymarked 1.2 km out of Borres, and as well as being the finer walk it is 4.5 km shorter than the Pola de Allande alternative, with 250 metres less climbing.

Why it has the reputation of being the hardest

Because it strings climbs together without a break, not because of one famous pass. The most cited point is the Puerto del Palo at 1,147 metres: from Pola de Allande, which sits at 525, that is 622 metres of continuous ascent. The Berducedo to Grandas de Salime stage drops from 1,040 to 210 metres in a little over eight kilometres, then climbs some 570 again by road into the village. No other Camino route chains something like that together for a fortnight.

For comparison with the stretch most people know: of the five stages from Sarria to Santiago, the hardest is Portomarín to Palas de Rei, with 519 metres of ascent. On the Primitivo seven days beat that figure and three nearly double it.

Starting from Lugo: this camino's 100 km mark

Anyone with only a week who wants the Compostela asks the same thing: where is the Primitivo's Sarria. The answer is Lugo. In February 2022 the Xunta put up an official 100 km marker there, on the central walkway of the Ronda das Fontiñas, on the same basis as the one at Sarria on the Francés, and the council marked the exact spot with two-metre letters.

It is worth saying that third-party measurements range from 97 to 101 km depending on who is adding up. What is solid is the Xunta's official waymarking, and that is what counts at the counter. From Lugo it is four or five days to Santiago, and on the way you cross a city worth stopping in: the Roman wall of Lugo has been a World Heritage Site since 2000 — two kilometres around, 8 to 10 metres high, 85 towers, and the only Roman wall anywhere that still has its full circuit intact.

Where it joins the Camino Francés

At Melide, about 53 km from Santiago. From there the Primitivo stops being solitary all at once: you share the path, the albergues and the queues with the Francés, which carries ten times the traffic. People arriving from a fortnight of empty mountains tend to feel that change more than the tiredness.

You will read that the two meet at Palas de Rei, including on one official tourism site. They do not: the Primitivo does not go through Palas de Rei at all.

Beds: where it actually gets tight

This week we asked pilgrims openly which village they had actually failed to find a bed in. From the Primitivo we got Grado, Borres, Samblismo, Oviedo and Grandas de Salime. Setting those names against what each village really holds, the problem is not the same in all of them, and the difference matters when you plan.

Grado is the straightforward capacity case: sixteen beds for the first stage of the route, no reservations possible, and registration only from two in the afternoon. What people tell us is that it fills early, and although we could not confirm that in any source, the three facts that are documented explain it on their own. Six kilometres on, Cabruñana has eighteen beds and opens all year: that is the safety net.

Borres is different and rather more serious. The whole village, municipal and private together, comes to around thirty beds, and what follows is not another village but the Hospitales stage, twenty-three kilometres without a single service. There is no plan B at four in the afternoon here. One operational detail as well: the keys to the municipal albergue are picked up at the El Barín bar, which Gronze listed as temporarily closed in May 2026. If you plan to sleep there, call ahead.

A Fonsagrada has the most beds: 42 in the Xunta albergue, open all year, plus three or four private places. Here it is worth being exact, because the one account we have from the village is not somebody who failed to get a bed: they had everything booked, the private albergue filled up and they ended up being given a single room. We include it because the village's real risk is structural: there is absolutely nothing for the next 24 km to O Cádavo. Anyone who finds nothing here cannot simply walk on for another hour, which is what you do on the Francés.

And one surprise we did not expect: the village people complained about most is not in the mountains, it is Oviedo, kilometre zero. We were told that in late April the municipal albergue, which has fifty beds, was full. If you start in season, the first night counts too.

The practical conclusion, and it holds for the whole route: on the Primitivo the question is not how many beds there are in the village you mean to sleep in, but how many there are in the next ten kilometres. For over half the route the answer is none.

When to walk it

No section closes in winter, contrary to what you sometimes read. What does happen is that accommodation shuts: the public albergue in Grado and La Quintana open from 1 March to 31 October, and La Montera in Borres closes from November to March. Cabruñana, the municipal in Borres, Casa Pasarín in A Fonsagrada and the one in O Cádavo stay open all year.

Spring is what almost everyone recommends. August brings crowds, and September and October are still good with a higher chance of rain. The Hospitales rule overrides the calendar: in snow or fog, go via Pola de Allande, whatever the month.