Camino De Santiago by car

There are commonly walked paths, but there is no single route for the Camino—simply going to Santiago is the camino. (Thus the saying that 'every Camino begins at home.)

That means you're looking at a 2-week road trip across Spain, ending in Santiago de Compostela. It's a pretty broad scope and could launch from San Sebastian, Barcelona, Gibraltar, or anywhere in between. You're going to have to narrow that down before you can plan your path.

Try searching YouTube for "Camino de Santiago by Car." It pulled up several videos that should give you a good start.

No Compostela for driving the Camino, but there are some good views. We drove the Camino back in 2017 as part of a 17 days northern Spain trip. Since we didn’t need to drive it specifically from St. Jean Pied du Port to Santiago, we split it. We started in Madrid drove to Zamora, then up to León and then followed the Camino to Santiago. We then drove the northern cost over to Bayonne before heading to St. Jean where were picked up the Camino again and followed it to Burgos before heading back to Madrid. By doing it that way we picked up and dropped off the car in Madrid.

A number of sights along the Camino are off the main road, so research where you want to stop since you will need to drive on a few small, very rural roads, such as, when visiting the Cruz de Hierro, Alto de Perdón, Alto de O’Cebreiro and Santa María de Leboreiro.

One link is to our entire trip photos while the other are photos from the same trip, but Camino specific.

Yes there is no one "Camino de Santiago", the most popular one is the Camino Francés, which straddles northern Castilla y Leon. To do that you could fly in to Madrid, take the AVE to Zaragoza, rent a car then drive to Pamplona to pick up the trail. Not the most scenic route imo, especially in the end of August when everything will be drab and brown.

You could also consider the Camino del Norte, which makes its way across the greener more lush north of Spain, along the coast of the Bay of Biscay. To do that you would take the ALVIA train to Bilbao, then rent your car and head west from there.

Hello from Wisconsin,
I would suggest you don't tell people you are driving "the path". Say your are touring the shores of the Bay of Biscay. Or seeing the Europa Mountains. Or the Guggenheim in Bilbao. The El Camino is to be reverently walked...or with horse. I have friends who have walked the Camino de Santiago starting from St. Jean Pied de Port, France for all three it became a deep spiritual event.

We drove from the Spanish border to Santiago de Compostela. It is beautiful. Wonder up the valleys into the interior. I describe this area as Ireland on Steroids. Green, really green, and mountainous. The larger more famous cities...meh, we liked the villages. Most all the public houses serve coffee from an espresso machine and have food. You can drink coffee and drive. Off the major road the villages are what you want villages be. Small with houses scattered together like twigs under a tree.

There are famous caves between France and Saitiago. And there are less famous caves. Go to the less famous. Cueva del Pindel has a great location and some nice mammoth drawings. Well they are small drawings of mammoths. We managed to drive up, wait ten fifteen minutes and get a tour.

What I regret is that we didn't cruise around Galacia. The area N and W of Santiago de Compostela.

It is beautiful green , the further away you get from the coast, like 60 miles inland, it becomes dry.

wayne iNWI

Thank you so much to everyone for all the input. Jaimeelsabio I love all your pictures. Carlos, the maps looks very helpful too.
I would like to start in Pamplona but I think it will be a bit easier to fight to Bilbao and I guess leave from Bilbao too. Rick Steves says that it takes 12 hours to getting around The Camino De Santiago.

At the end of August, I definitely recommend following the Camino del Norte rather than the Camino francés, unless you like driving through wheat fields in various shades of beige for hours.
Two weeks is perfect to explore the northern coast, and Bilbao is a good place to start.

@balso, yes it will be north of Spain, I can’t wait 😊

I can't advise on where to start and end, but we drove from Logrono -- via Borgos and Leon -- to Sarria because we're not walking the entire Camino. We skipped that part because, as a friend advised, it's like walking from Bakersfield to Fresno -- and given what we saw, he is right.
Still, why not make some adventure of it. So we took our time, driving on backroads as much as possible. And what you may want to do -- which is what we did: use Google maps (or Waze -- but we happened to use Google) and turn off the route guidance that includes using toll roads. That will put you off the main highway periodically. Then, as we also did, sometimes disregard Google entirely and divert to the smallest road you see. We were in some fantastic backroads -- single-ish lanes through pretty farm country. Google will get you back on course when you need to be. In the meantime there are LOADS of route signs for the Camino you can follow -- on the highways and smaller roads. And in many many cases, you can stop in the small towns that serve the pilgrims to share a coffee and croissant with them while you listen to their stories ( in an array of UN languages).

One interesting note about our current walk on the Camino... It appears the majority of solo hikers are women! So you may be traveling by car but when you do stop, there is certain to be one or two solo women travelers wherever you are.

I am definitely taking note of your stops.I have been a bit nerves about the whole solo travel thing, so is good to hear I am not going to be the only one! 😊