Journey
Camino & Sacred Europe
Six places people have walked to for a thousand years
15 days · 5 stops · 5 countries · 4,780 km in a straight line
Not a religious journey unless you want it to be — a route through the buildings and landscapes that pilgrimage produced, which is most of what Europe built before it built anything else. It ends where it should, on foot, in the rain, in Galicia. Two of these stops are still working monastic communities and one is a sovereign state.
The route, in order
Every hop is a straight-line distance between two coordinates. This atlas holds no road and no rail geometry, so that number is a floor on the leg and never the leg — Chamonix to Zermatt is 69 km here and about 170 on the ground, round a mountain range. It is here for the scale of the thing, not for planning a day.
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1 Days 1–2 2 nights
Canterbury United Kingdom
The English end: a cathedral, a murder in it, and a pilgrims' road out of London.
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2 Days 3–4 2 nights
↳ 316 km from Canterbury in a straight line
Chartres France
Across the Channel to 172 windows of twelfth-century glass and a labyrinth in the floor.
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3 Days 5–7 3 nights
↳ 1127 km from Chartres in a straight line
Rome Italy
South to the city everything else was measured against, and the necropolis under the basilica.
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4 Days 8–10 3 nights
↳ 806 km from Rome in a straight line
Meteora (Kalambaka) Greece
East to six working monasteries on top of sandstone pillars, linked by monks' footpaths.
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5 Days 11–14 4 nights
↳ 2531 km from Meteora (Kalambaka) in a straight line
Santiago de Compostela Spain
The long jump west, and the last hundred kilometres walked in from Sarria.
The record
- Length
- 15 days
- From / to
- Canterbury → Santiago de Compostela
- Countries
- United Kingdom → France → Italy → Greece → Spain
- Straight-line distance
- 4,780 km, stop to stop
- Difficulty
- moderate
- Transport
- rail, on foot
- Accommodation
- guesthouse
- Budget shape
- moderate
- Curated by
- EuropeDoor editorial
- Estimated cost
- about €2,380 per person
- Months that work
- April, May, September, October
Experiences along the way
The last day of the Pilgrims' Way
Twenty miles from Chilham along the North Downs, arriving on foot the way it was meant to be done.
Testaccio, where Rome eats
The market and the streets around it are where Roman offal cooking survives; go at one, order what the sign says.
The Appian Way on a Sunday
The road is closed to traffic on Sundays: basalt paving from 312 BC, catacombs, aqueducts and countryside, inside the city.
The old monks' paths
Stone-cut trails link the pillars through the woods; three hours on foot beats a whole day by road.
The last hundred kilometres
From Sarria, five days, and the minimum distance for a compostela. Busy, sociable, and still the real thing.
What you will be eating
- United Kingdom — A Sunday roast, which is a meal and an institution
- France — Bread bought twice a day, because it is worth nothing by evening
- Italy — Pasta by region — trofie in Liguria, orecchiette in Puglia, carbonara only in Rome
- Greece — Whatever is in the pot that day — ask to see the kitchen, which is normal
- Spain — Tapas, which is a way of eating rather than a dish — and free with a drink in Granada and León
What to pack
- Boots already broken in — this is not the trip to test them
- A credencial if you intend to walk the last stage
- Blister tape, before you need it
- Something to cover shoulders in every church
What this estimate covers
About €2,380 per person: 14 nights at the moderate daily band for each country on the route, plus a distance-based transport figure between stops, plus 12%. It excludes getting to the start and home from the end, and it is planning arithmetic from published bands rather than a quote. How these numbers are made →