Where to start

[Young-Im Oh]

I'm thinking about taking santiago walk this september and wondering which is the best place to start for the walk.
I'm living in London and as a beginner i want to go for 7 days journey.
I need an experienced person's advice for where one should start for this kind of trip.
I would appreciate for any comment.

[HuskyNerd]

Hi Young-Im ~
Welcome to the Forum and congratulations on your upcoming Camino. You have a number of options for where to begin. I'm going to assume that you would like to earn your compostela certificate, so these options are based on doing the required 100 km minimum walk with an average of 20-30 kms/day:

• Start from Villafranca del Bierzo - this is a delightful town, but it's location at the bottom of a big hill and the fact it requires a bus to get there may both be disadvantages. This allows an approx 27 km/day average and gives you excellent scenery.
• Start from O Cebreiro - another delightful town, but rather remote, though accessible by bus. It's at the top of the hill you'd climb if you started at Villafranca. The first day after O Cebreiro is a steep downhill, but the scenery is excellent. This would be a 23 km/day average. A variation of this option is to start at Triacastela, which avoids the steep downhill.
• Start from Sarria and instead of ending your Camino at Santiago, end your Camino at Finisterre. There are fairly easy transfers to Sarria, which is just over the 100 km minimum, plus the extra 90 kms to Finisterre are very quiet and pretty scenic. This gives you a 27 km/day average, which is pretty high, and also doesn't leave you much time to enjoy Santiago.

Hope this is helpful to you. Buen camino!

[Anso]

Hi Young

I've found this site really useful in working out routes. http://www.godesalco.com/plan/frances

Great for working out distances and linking that with the various accommodation. From what I've heard that last 100km can get busy so I'd plan to hit locations with more than just one accommodation option.

Good luck with your camino, I'm going on my first from Burgos, on Sunday, so might see you near the end in September I expect to be hitting Santiago around the 14th.

Buen camino!