Back in Bulletin 62, an article of mine appeared on the various developments of routes to Santiago that were taking place around Europe. That was in 1998, and a lot has changed since then, so I thought it was time for an update.
Those who've been following the development of the Camino(s) over a long period of time will, I'm sure, be just as amazed as I am at the changes there have been. In the beginning - say, 15-20 years ago - if you wanted to walk to Santiago, there were few books of any practical use to help you and, even on the Camino Francés, long stretches on major roads or without any refuges. There were long-distance paths you could use in places, but these often didn't go where you wanted to go, and were also often very circuitous - the objectives are different: a long-distance path is intended to be an attractive walk in the countryside, generally avoiding towns, whereas the pilgrim wants to reach a distant destination, visiting shrines, which are often in towns, en route.
Now, the infrastructure particularly on the Camino Francés has improved substantially: almost every village now has a refuge of some sorts; road sections are now largely diverted or put onto purpose-built cycle-paths. And those returning from Santiago have formed local and regional Friends/Amigos/Amis groups similar to the Confraternity. The aim is not just to help prospective pilgrims, but to help locals start from their home, and those from further away to cross their area.
At the same time, there's been a substantial increase in interest in the cultural and historical aspects of the routes, culminating in Council of Europe and Unesco designations, which has resulted in a large amount of publicity and documentation, much of it unfortunately aimed at motorists and not at people on foot. This too has led to the creation of new routes, though not necessarily with pilgrim-oriented infrastructure, and to some extent to a blurring of objectives, with tourist offices aiming to attract people to their area rather than help those heading for Santiago.
So, what do the routes described here consist of? As far as I'm aware, they are all supported by some sort of organisation, for the most part a Jacobean association, though in some cases a walking organisation. Most of them both have a guidebook and are waymarked, though some have either/or. (In some cases, I'm not sure what the status is!) They will generally try to follow a/the historical route as closely as possible, visiting the interesting towns, churches, monasteries, etc en route, whilst also trying to keep road-walking to a minimum. In the case of those created by Jacobean associations, increasingly there are pilgrim refuges or other pilgrim-oriented accommodation as well. Though sometimes based on existing long-distance paths, specifically pilgrim routes are often shorter.
As you can see from the map, the number of towns that you can walk from along one of these routes is now quite large, and increasing rapidly. Fortunately for those of us trying to keep track of all this, at the same time as the extraordinary growth in interest in the Camino, there's been another even larger growth area: the worldwide web. This has made keeping up-to-date with developments around Europe very much simpler. Of course, this article is only a brief overview, which is based mainly on hearsay; I certainly have not walked more than a fraction of the routes listed here. If you are interested in any of the routes described, I would strongly recommend taking a look on the web, where there is often an overview guide and in some cases a detailed guide with accommodation lists etc available. You could contact the Association involved; email makes this very simple these days. If the links on my site don't help, try one of the web search engines; if you find something relevant not mentioned on my site (quite likely!), please let me know, though I try and limit my links to factual information. Finally, if you do walk a route, send some feedback to the Confraternity - it may be of help to others.
What about those areas that do not currently have such a route? Well, if you're prepared to wait, it may not be long before such routes are created. In the meantime, you have to revert to the old method: devise your own route, using existing long-distance paths where present and appropriate.