Walking Guide to the Camino de Santiago

This guide covers the Camino Francés from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela, the most popular walking route of all the Caminos. It was first published in 2007 as a free download from our website and it's been going strong every since. It's updated every year to take account of changes along the Camino.

Fully updated after walking the Camino in August / September. The 2025 edition of the guide is now available to download.

You can download the 2025 edition here.

Today there are two versions of the guide, the full guide and the donativo guide

The donativo (free) guide

The donativo guide is given to you free. If you find it useful you can make a donation.

It has all the information you need to walk the Camino.

The full guide

Download the first 20 pages of the Walking Guide to the Camino de Santiago.

You can get the full guide as a PDF document to download by making a donation to this website.

The full Walking Guide to the Camino de Santiago has the following information:

• Information about pilgrim hostels with prices and opening dates and the facilities available
• Shops, cafés, pharmacies, banks, etc., in all of the places the Camino passes through
• Urban maps of towns and cities and detailed route maps of the Camino in rural areas
• Walking notes about problematic points along the route
• Lots of information about historic sites along the Camino's route
• Camino legends and a description of the fascinating history of the Camino and the places it passes through
• Recommendations of great places to eat and unmissable local specialities
• Translations of place names of villages and towns
• The dates of local festivals, the famous Spanish fiestas

For your donation you'll also get a free PDF copy of our definitive guide to preparing for the Camino. It's been fully updated in November 2021 and has loads of information about:

• Packing: what to bring and (all importantly) what not to bring
• Health and safety: how to avoid, or if necessary, deal with blisters, bedbugs, heatstroke and other hazards
• What to expect on “the Way”: What's a typical Camino day?
• Communicating: with useful words and phrases in Spanish?
• History of the Camino and of Spain: what was the Camino like in the middle ages?

To download a sample of our guide to preparing for the Camino, just click here!

If you'd prefer to buy a printed copy or an ebook for Kindle you buy both books from Amazon:

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To see all the formats the guide is available in go H E R E.

The Walking Guide to the Camino de Santiago is also available as an app on Android and Apple (iPhone) mobile phones. For links to the apps see here.

Please support our work

We've been providing free guides to Camino pilgrims since 2012 and updating them every year. This is part of our commitment to supporting the Camino community. This all costs time and money. If you'd like to help us financially and ensure that we'll still be able to provide this service in the future you can do so in two ways.

ONE

By making a small donation. When you donate you'll be able to download the full guide in PDF format.

TWO

By using our online booking tool when you're reserving accommodation. If you sleep in a hotel or hostel after booking through our site we automatically receive a small payment from Booking.com. It's a win-win, it costs you nothing, the Camino Guide benefits, and a major muntinational company loses some money (that should probably be "win-win-win!") We've organised our booking tool so it's easy to see what accommodation is available along the Camino. Have a look, the Camino de Santiago / Camino Francés one is HERE.