Camino Francés
Somport → Santiago de Compostela
841 km from the Somport pass to Santiago, over the Pyrenees on the Aragonés and onto the Francés at Puente la Reina.
New information comes in every day — from pilgrims on the road and people I know along the way — and it goes out the moment it does. The app carries all of it offline, and it's still being built: new features arrive routinely.
Pilgrims on the road and friends along the way send me changes every day, and they go out the same day. The Camino Aragonés and Camino Frances app carries all of it offline, and it's still being built — new features arrive routinely.
Get the appFrom the listings on this site, recalculated as they change. 28 albergues ask for a donation rather than a price: pay what the night was worth to you, not nothing.
There are two historic ways over the Pyrenees, and almost everyone takes the one through Roncesvalles. The Aragonés is the other. It is for anyone who has walked the Francés and thought the beginning was too crowded, for anyone who wants a gentler first week than the Napoleon route, and for anyone who wants to arrive at Puente la Reina, the historic junction, on foot from the east rather than with the crowd from the north.
Who it isn't for: nobody in particular. It is short, beautiful and undemanding. Just understand that on its own it does not go to Santiago; it delivers you to the Francés with 700 km still to walk.
162 km from the Somport pass on the French border down to Puente la Reina in Navarra, where the two roads join and become the Camino Francés. You start high and walk downhill along the Aragón river: Canfranc, whose enormous railway station, built in the 1920s for a line to France that never quite worked and left to decay for decades, has been restored and reopened as a luxury hotel; you can walk through the lobby even if you are sleeping in the albergue. Then Jaca, which has a Romanesque cathedral worth an hour and is the only real town on the route. West of Jaca the road follows the river past Santa Cruz de la Serós to the monastery of San Juan de la Peña, built under an overhanging cliff, one of the most remarkable buildings in Spain and the highlight of the route. Then the Yesa reservoir, Sangüesa, and the last days across the hills into Navarra to the bridge at Puente la Reina.
Easy, and easier than the Francés's first day by a distance. The descent from Somport is long but gradual. After Jaca it is river valley, reservoir shore and rolling farmland, with one steep detour if you climb to San Juan de la Peña, which you should. Six or seven days. Underfoot it is good track and quiet road.
Enough beds for a route this length, in Jaca and the villages along the river, though the villages are small and the albergues in them fill in season. Every town on this page lists every bed, and the table on each town's page shows what is within a day's walk.
The prices at the top of this page come from the listings on this site, recalculated as they change. Aragón is inexpensive and Jaca is a mountain town with mountain-town food; the migas and the lamb are the meals to look for. Donativo albergues are found here as elsewhere, and donativo does not mean free.
May to October. The Somport pass is high and holds snow into spring; the valley is pleasant all summer, with warm days around 30 °C (86 °F) and cool nights. Autumn in the Aragón valley is beautiful.
The Somport pass is reached from the French side by train to Oloron-Sainte-Marie and bus up the valley, or from the Spanish side by bus from Jaca. Jaca has a railway station with a slow and scenic line to Zaragoza, which has an airport and fast trains from Madrid and Barcelona. Puente la Reina at the end is on the Francés, with buses to Pamplona.
Most people walk the Aragonés as the first week of a longer camino: Somport to Santiago, listed on this page as one route, is the Francés with a quieter beginning and a better bridge to cross at Puente la Reina.
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What the ground between two towns is actually like: everything you pass through, the climbing, and where you could stop along the way. Not a plan — a description.
Route index
841 km from Somport to Santiago de Compostela. Most pilgrims walk it in 30 to 38 days. Every town below has its own page.
Esta entidad ha sido beneficiaria de una ayuda del Programa de incentivos a la movilidad eficiente y sostenible (MOVES III), gestionado por la Xunta de Galicia a través del Instituto Enerxético de Galicia (INEGA) en el marco del Real Decreto 266/2021, y cofinanciada por la Unión Europea — NextGenerationEU, dentro del Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia.
