Camino de Santiago from Astorga

Ten stages to Santiago from the town with the Gaudí palace. This is where people start when they want the Cruz de Ferro and O Cebreiro without needing the two weeks that leaving from León demands.

Distance

259 km

Duration

10 days

Route

Camino Francés

Starts in 2025

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Figure checked Pilgrim Office, January–July 2026.

How the stages are usually split

There is no official split. These are the ones actually used, depending on the days you have.

In 10 stages, the usual split

Stage distances are general references. We have not recalculated them against the official track yet, which is why they are underlined.

The most efficient start on the Francés

If we had to recommend one starting point on days-invested to things-seen, it would be this. Ten days cover the three moments people remember from the Camino Francés: the Cruz de Ferro, El Bierzo and O Cebreiro. None of them happen if you start at Sarria or Ponferrada.

Astorga also gives you a town: the Gaudí Episcopal Palace, the cathedral and the Roman walls. Arrive the evening before, see it, and start walking the next morning.

The Cruz de Ferro

It is the highest point on the Camino Francés, around 1,500 metres, and its ritual is the best known on the route: leaving a stone brought from home at the foot of the pile.

You pass it on the second stage, out of Rabanal. The climb is long but gentle; the hard part comes after, on the descent to Molinaseca: more than a thousand metres down over stony ground, with the El Acebo section punishing more knees than anywhere else on the Francés. Poles genuinely matter here.

Plenty of people split that stage by sleeping in Molinaseca instead of continuing to Ponferrada. It is only 7.5 km less, but those 7.5 come after the descent.

When to walk it

May to October. This route crosses the León mountains and O Cebreiro, which can have snow and thick fog between December and March, with several albergues closed in the high section.

In high summer the first stage towards Rabanal is hard going in the heat: it is one of the last meseta stages before the mountains.

Getting to Astorga

Astorga has a railway station half an hour from León, and León has direct high-speed trains from Madrid. There are also buses from León and Ponferrada.

It is a convenient start: you can leave Madrid in the morning and be walking the next day without an early alarm.