Can you plan the Camino walk on your own, or should you go with an experienced trip outfitter? Yes, you absolutely can plan your own adventure. These trip notes
may help your planning. I organized our whole trip
and everything went smoothly. Below I list all of our expenses. You can see that planning your own Camino experience can save a lot of money. But self-planning does require a lot of time and effort. If you are not
comfortable organizing all of the necessary reservations and travel arrangements, then use a guide.
Is it safe to walk the Camino solo? Absolutely! There are often other pilgrims within eyesight. Many of them are walking alone. However, I was glad to be walking with Lil. I
think a solo trek would require a lot more mental toughness to keep going. Having a travel companion is more fun and it splits the expenses.
There are churches and shrines all along the way. Almost every place we stayed had a pilgrims' mass in the evening. You don't need to walk with a church group or a priest in order
to have religious experience.
The guidebooks talk about not making reservations more than a day in advance in order to maximize flexibility; this allows you to decide how far you wish to walk each day
or take an extra rest day if you need one. However, due to the popularity of the Camino, I think
that flexibility is overrated. There are so many pilgrims walking the Camino that finding a bed each night becomes a challenge.
There is a group of pilgrims that get on the road quite early each day and then walk as fast as they
can to the endpoint of that stage just so that they can be first in line to make a reservation. That sounds stressful to me. Because we had reservations ahead of time,
we had a private room waiting for us at the end of each day and no worries about when we would arrive.
When planning your trip, make reservations for Roncevalles first. There are few places to stay at Roncesvalles,
especially if you wish to avoid sleeping in the monstrous dorm room
with 120 other pilgrims. In the end, the only private room I could get was a quad, even though there were only two of us.
Once I nailed down that date, I could determine the dates for all of the other stops.
I made our Roncevalles reservation on January 1st of 2025 for our May trip.
I recommend all the places we stayed except for Gite Compostella in St. Jean Pied de Port. I was unhappy with their breakfast and the fact that they charged us 20 euros for the use of bed sheets.
Our trip closely follows the Mac's Adventures Best of the Camino tour. It was that trip that
gave me the idea of doing the first seven stages and the final five stages. Otherwise, all the planning was on my own.
I made a lot of reservations through Booking.com, but also by contacting establishments directly. I visited this website extensively: Camino Sleeps. This Way of St. James site has a pretty decent description, as well as route profile, of each stage of the French way
The Camino Forum answers some common questions from pilgrims. Utilizing the luggage transfer service was absolutely the right move for us. Jacotrans charged us €7 per day / per bag.
Using Jacotrans meant we only had to carry light day packs with rain gear, water and snacks. Made the walking much more pleasant.
There is a website that tallies up how many accredited pilgrims arrive each day.
I used a self-serve laundry in León. This meant we only had to pack half as many clothes. I would avoid July and August. Not only is the Camino most crowded during those months, but there is also the threat of heatwaves and wildfires. We rode the 6A bus to the Compostela airport and flew back to Paris on Vueling Airlines. The 6A bus takes cash as you board.
Like so many places in the world today, there is controversy regarding overtourism.
Spain heavily promoted the Camino to increase tourism perhaps not expecting to be so successful. Someone in Santiago de Compostela is making money from all the restaurants, souvenir shops and hotels that cater to the pilgrim hordes, even if many of the locals are upset by the increased number of visitors.
We met people walking stages of the Camino - that was my favorite part of the journey - talking to people from all over the world.
However, we saw a lot of people who had to drop out because of injury or fatigue. Could we have finished if we had attempted all 33 stages
of the entire Camino? Perhaps not. Not only must a pilgrim be physically tough, but there is also a lot of mental resiliency required to walk 15 miles a day, for days on end. Hats off to all pilgrims
who have walked the complete length; I can appreciate what an achievement that is.
My biggest complaint was not being able to find dinner before 7 PM. This problem actually seemed worse in the big cities, which is where I would have expected to find more options. The guidebook by Brierly is considered thee best book for the Camino,
I carried it with me each day (though the Camino is extremely well marked, there is little chance of going astray).
There is a lot of different information in the Moon handbook that I consulted when identifying waymarks along the Camino.
Below is the amount it cost the two of us to hike twelve stages of the Camino. It includes the time spent in Paris, plus the train fares for getting from Paris to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, and the nonstop airfares to fly back to Paris from Santiago de Compostela. We booked private rooms each night; the Camino could be cheaper if you are willing to stay in the big, noisy dorms of the hostels. To me, the quiet of the private rooms was worth the extra price. I got a roundtrip, nonstop airfare from Seattle to Paris for $1347.21.
My half of the expenses was $3828.60/2 = $1914.30 + $1347.21 roundtrip plane ticket = $3261.51 for my total expense of the entire Camino trip.
