Driving the Camino de Santiago

Hi,
4 nights excluding Santiago give you time for a quick but scenic N coast road trip, Counting nights:
1. San Sebastian
2. Santillana del Mar area
3. Oviedo, drive via Picos de Europa if you don't mind mountain roads
4. Oviedo, with possible day trip to the coast (Cudillero) or to the S. Maria del Naranco sanctuary
(5. Santiago)

Not sure about the exact route of the Camino del Norte, but if you search for this name you'll find several resources on the route.

If you google Camino de Santiago you will find lots of maps but the Camino doesn’t appear on road maps simply because the walking route avoids roads whenever possible. The Rick Steves guide book does have a chapter on the Camino however and he even gives ideas on driving and incorporating day hikes.

As we traveled in areas near the various Caminos, we’d see the scallop shell markers in the towns directing walkers. We enjoyed seeing the walkers arriving in the plaza in Santiago de Compostela l, finding the marker there.

Go to pilgrim.es/en. From the menu, select routes, then click on northern route. On the northern route page, scroll down and it will list the stages with beginning and ending towns for that stage. You could also select, primitive route and check its stages. In 2017, my wife and I drove the French route and stopped at a number of Camino locations. It took some research to find the out of the way sights, but it was well worth it. If you search on “Camino de Santiago Norte” there are a couple good images that show the towns the northern Camino passes through.

Edited: The site I mentioned has elevation profiles too, difficulty, an itinerary, points of interest, and services for each stage.

Thank you to everyone for your ideas and suggestions! I will look into all of them.

You might check the American Pilgrims website. They have overviews of all the different Camino routes. I believe they also have a resource that gives terrain detail should you want to try a short walk.

I walked the Camino last summer and there are plenty of places where I might suggest walking part of the route that are not too far out from Santiago.
The challenge here is that the part of Galicia coming into Santiago is quite mountainous and not the easiest stretch. Large stretches of it are not near roads and would be hard to get to with a car. I would not suggest doing the part of the Camino that goes from outside of Santiago into Santiago...it is not beautiful and is just a ton of city walking. You won't really get a sense of the Camino.
That said, one thing I would suggest would be driving to Sarria, which is where many pilgrims start who don't want to walk very far and just want to get their Compostella for walking the last 100 kilometers. You can walk from Sarria to Portomarin. It is a very "civilized" part of the route with plenty of people walking, lots of small cafes and donativos to stop at to have something to eat or drink, farms all along the way, and the terrain isn't too hard.
Another very nice piece is from Triacastella to Sarria...you walk through a forest through some very small villages and it's one of the cooler parts of the path if the weather is hot. There are two routes...out of Triacastella if you follow the arrow to the left it is a longer route but goes by a stunning monestary that you can tour. The route to the right is shorter and goes through the forest, along a stream, and past some interesting farms. Most people go left but I prefer the route to the right!
Let me know if you have questions...

Or Anita, they are getting old and know they couldn’t walk the entire Camino, or, maybe they can’t afford to take 30-35 days off from their job to walk the entire French Camino. I wouldn’t second guess someone’s motivation or reason for walking just a portion of any of the Camino branches. In my case, our friends are walking the Sarria to Santiago leg later this year and invited us to join them, so that’s what we’re walking. Saying someone is doing it simply for a piece of paper is nonsense.