Camino de las Asturias

At a Glance

• Start / Finish: Pamplona (Navarre) / Oviedo (Asturias); San Salvador Cathedral lies just under a kilometer beyond the last map point on the edge of town
• Length: 578.8 km, of which just under 55 km between Agurain and Armiñón run on the same track as the Camino Vasco del Interior
• Duration: 25 stages, averaging a little over 23 km; with rest days, plan on four weeks
• Elevation: ↗ 15,079 m / ↘ 15,277 m
• Highest point: 1,622 m at km 429.5, between Camporredondo de Alba (Palencia) and Valverde de la Sierra (León); the Puerto de Tarna doesn't come until km 496.7, at around 1,490 m
• Landscape: Burunda valley, the grain plain of the Llanada, the salt valley of Añana, the Merindades, the Ebro reservoir, the Montaña Palentina, the beech forests of Redes, the mining country along the Nalón
• Operator / Waymarking: local associations; for long stretches on the red-and-white GR 1 Sendero Histórico long-distance trail, yellow arrows only in places – a GPS track is a must
• Traces of St. James: Pamplona Cathedral on the Camino Francés, the Santiago chapel in Vitoria's cathedral, the apostle columns with St. James in the Cámara Santa of Oviedo
• Accommodation: pilgrim albergues in Pamplona, Agurain, Vitoria and Oviedo; in between mostly casas rurales, hostales and municipal lodgings – call ahead in small villages
• Connecting routes: Camino Francés in Pamplona, Camino Vasco del Interior between Agurain and Armiñón, Camino Olvidado near Pedrosa de Valdeporres, Cervatos and Cervera, Camino Vadiniense & Lebaniego in Las Salas, Camino Primitivo from Oviedo
• Best time: June to mid-October; between Brañosera and Tarna there's often still snow in spring, and the mountains of León are no place for pilgrims in winter

Overview

The Camino de las Asturias is the route that existed before the Camino Francés did. In the 9th and 10th centuries the plains of La Rioja and Burgos lay in the borderlands facing the Moorish south, and the coast was a target for Norman raids. Anyone heading for the Apostle's tomb walked along the foot of the mountains, through Álava and the Kingdom of Asturias, and the first goal was Oviedo, where Alfonso II held court. Only when Sancho III of Navarre made the road via Nájera safe in the early 11th century did the flow of pilgrims slide south. So the detour came first. The main route came later.

Today this is a long, quiet mountain camino. It starts in Pamplona, in the thick of the Francés crowds, and by the first afternoon in Irurtzun you're almost alone. Then come villages that loom larger in history books than on the map: Valpuesta, with seven inhabitants and the oldest traces of Castilian; Brañosera, with the country's first town charter; Cervatos, with the cheekiest Romanesque corbels in Spain. Honestly, this isn't a route you walk on the side: 578.8 kilometers, more than 15,000 meters of climbing, waymarking with gaps and few real albergues.

Other Names

In Spanish the route is called Camino de las Asturias or Ruta de las Asturias, in English Asturian Way. The name doesn't refer to today's region but to the early medieval Kingdom of Asturias that pilgrims were heading for. A word of caution when you do your research: the Xunta's Xacopedia lists under Viejo Camino de Santiago a route from Pamplona that crosses the same region but aims for the Francés in the Bierzo – and the same name is often used for the Camino Olvidado from Bilbao. The Asturias route is the branch that heads north, to Oviedo. Many places have two names, such as Altsasu/Alsasua or Llangréu/Langreo.

Who It's Ideal For—and Who It's Not So Ideal For

Ideal if you've already walked a camino or two and now want one that does nothing for you: four weeks in northern Spain far from every pilgrim stream, villages where people ask you where on earth you're actually going. Ideal if early Romanesque churches and 9th-century charters draw you in and you want to continue on the Primitivo from Oviedo.

Honestly, though, it's not for you if you want to rely on yellow arrows: for long stretches you follow red-and-white GR blazes or nothing at all, and without a GPS track you'll get lost. Not for you if you need pilgrim company and evenings in albergues – between Vitoria and Oviedo albergues are the exception, and if you walk alone, casas rurales quickly cost you double. And not for you with weak knees in spring: between Reinosa and Tarna you spend days above 1,000 meters, with snow into May.

Route & Landscape

Pamplona to Armiñón (km 0–132.8): From Pamplona the route leads via Berriozar to Irurtzun (km 22.1), then through the Burunda, the corridor between the Sierras of Aralar and Urbasa: Lakuntza, Etxarri Aranatz, Altsasu (km 55.7), Ziordia on the border with Álava. From Agurain/Salvatierra (km 77.8) the route runs together with the Camino Vasco del Interior across the grain plain of the Llanada Alavesa to Vitoria-Gasteiz (km 106.3), La Puebla de Arganzón (km 125.4) and Armiñón. Alegría-Dulantzi lies a good kilometer off the route.

Armiñón to Reinosa (km 132.8–327.8): Past Armiñón the route turns west into the hills: via Salcedo into the salt valley of Salinas de Añana (km 162.9), via Espejo to Valpuesta (km 183.9), Tobillas and into the Losa valley to San Pantaleón de Losa (km 207.9). Then the Merindades in northern Burgos, with Bárcena de Pienza, Torme and Puentedey (km 263.3), the village of the natural bridge, Pedrosa de Valdeporres and Ahedo. At Corconte (km 297.3) you reach the Ebro reservoir and walk along its shore to Reinosa (km 327.8).

Reinosa to Oviedo (km 327.8–578.8): Via Cervatos the route climbs to Brañosera (km 355.8, 1,217 m) and reaches Cervera de Pisuerga (km 390.5). Then the highlands: La Lastra, Camporredondo de Alba, the highest point at km 429.5, Besande, Prioro and Las Salas (km 463.7) in León. Via Lois and Acebedo you head up to the Puerto de Tarna (km 496.7) and steeply down through Redes Natural Park, along the Nalón via Pola de Laviana (km 543.2) and Langreo (km 556.3) to Oviedo.

Stages, Terrain, and Difficulty

We show the route in 25 stages; distances come from the Camino Ninja map, calibrated exactly to 578.8 km. The stage towns are chosen by daily distance, not by albergues – between Vitoria and Oviedo there's often only a hostal, a casa rural or a municipal apartment. Sort out your bed in small villages a day ahead.

1. Pamplona → Irurtzun (22.1 km) — Out of the city via Berriozar into the hills.
2. Irurtzun → Lakuntza (18.6 km) — Into the Burunda below the Sierra de Aralar.
3. Lakuntza → Altsasu (15.0 km) — Short and flat via Etxarri Aranatz.
4. Altsasu → Agurain/Salvatierra (22.1 km) — Via Ziordia into Álava and the Llanada.
5. Agurain/Salvatierra → Vitoria-Gasteiz (28.5 km) — Flat, shared with the Vasco.
6. Vitoria-Gasteiz → La Puebla de Arganzón (19.1 km) — Into the Burgos enclave of Treviño.
7. La Puebla de Arganzón → Fontecha (28.1 km) — Farewell to the Vasco past Armiñón, hills.
8. Fontecha → Villanueva de Valdegovía (26.6 km) — Salinas de Añana and Espejo.
9. Villanueva de Valdegovía → Bóveda (18.0 km) — Valpuesta and Tobillas.
10. Bóveda → Paresotas (22.8 km) — Losa valley, San Pantaleón.
11. Paresotas → Torme (25.1 km) — Merindades, Bárcena de Pienza.
12. Torme → Villamartín de Sotoscueva (24.7 km) — Puentedey, climb to 820 m.
13. Villamartín de Sotoscueva → Corconte (26.6 km) — Across high plateaus to the reservoir.
14. Corconte → Reinosa (30.5 km) — Long and flat along the Ebro reservoir.
15. Reinosa → Brañosera (28.0 km) — Cervatos, then 370 m up.
16. Brañosera → San Felices de Castillería (20.5 km) — Highlands, snow lingers late.
17. San Felices de Castillería → San Martín de los Herreros (26.2 km) — Via Cervera de Pisuerga.
18. San Martín de los Herreros → Camporredondo de Alba (20.1 km) — Over La Lastra, 1,368 m.
19. Camporredondo de Alba → Besande (17.4 km) — With the highest point, 1,622 m.
20. Besande → Las Salas (23.7 km) — Prioro, down into the Esla valley.
21. Las Salas → Acebedo (21.2 km) — Salamón and Lois, barely a place to stop.
22. Acebedo → Bezanes (25.9 km) — The queen stage over the Puerto de Tarna.
23. Bezanes → Rioseco (20.2 km) — Tanes reservoir, upper Nalón valley.
24. Rioseco → Langreo (25.3 km) — Pola de Laviana, old coal country.
25. Langreo → Oviedo (22.5 km) — Via San Esteban de las Cruces to Oviedo.

Nowhere is the route technically difficult, but it's long and high. From Brañosera to Tarna you walk a good 140 kilometers almost continuously at or above 1,000 meters, often without a bar. The descent from Tarna to Bezanes drops more than 800 meters over roughly 14 kilometers – your knees will feel that more than any climb.

"Per devia Alavae": when the detour was still the main road

The phrase appears in the Historia Silense, a chronicle written between 1109 and 1135 in the Kingdom of León. The chronicler praises King Sancho III of Navarre for clearing the road from the Pyrenees to Nájera – the very road pilgrims had previously avoided for fear of the Moors: "per devia Alavae peregrini declinabant," they detoured along the remote paths of Álava. The Xunta's Xacopedia translates: "los peregrinos se desviaban por la apartadiza Álava" (the pilgrims turned aside through remote Álava). So before Sancho built up the Francés via Logroño and Nájera around 1030, pilgrim traffic ran through the very country you cross in your first week.

Where did these paths lead? To Oviedo. The city, founded in 761 according to the Xacopedia, was the capital of the Kingdom of Asturias under Alfonso II, and in the Cámara Santa of San Salvador Cathedral lay the Arca Santa, a reliquary chest regarded as a treasure from Jerusalem. In 1075 Alfonso VI had the chest ceremonially opened and clad in silver; in 1096 he founded a hospital for poor pilgrims in Oviedo. Anyone bound for Santiago visited the Salvador first – and then continued on the road we now call the Primitivo.

That doesn't mean every meter of today's route is a medieval pilgrim road. The chronicle names a direction, not a line on the ground; we found no pilgrims documented by name on exactly this route. Only in the 21st century did associations piece the stages together into a pilgrim route, for long stretches on the line of the GR 1 Sendero Histórico, the red-and-white long-distance trail from Empúries to Fisterra. In practice that means you're walking a route with a very old idea and very young infrastructure. Plan with a track instead of arrows and with hostales instead of albergues – in return, pilgrims here are as rare as they were a thousand years ago.

Highlights Along the Way

• Vitoria-Gasteiz (km 106.3) — founded in 1181 as Nova Victoria; Santa María Cathedral with its Santiago chapel.
• Salinas de Añana (km 162.9) — a salt valley with wooden terraces, already on record in 822.
• San Pantaleón de Losa (km 207.9) — a Romanesque hermitage consecrated in 1207, perched on a rock shaped like a ship's prow; Jonah and the whale on the portal.
• Puentedey (km 263.3) — a village built on a natural bridge, with the Nela flowing through the limestone beneath it; first mentioned in 1351.
• Embalse del Ebro (km 297–327) — built from 1921 to 1945, inaugurated in 1952; four villages lie on its bed.
• Reinosa (km 327.8) — the main town of Campoo, on the railroad since 1857; in 1971 the thermometer here read minus 24.6 degrees Celsius.
• San Pedro de Cervatos (km 334.1) — a collegiate church, built in 1129 according to its inscription and consecrated in 1199, with the best-known erotic corbels of Spanish Romanesque.
• Cervera de Pisuerga (km 390.5) — first mentioned in 818; in Santa María del Castillo, an altarpiece by Juan de Flandes from 1495.
• Puerto de Tarna (km 496.7) — 1,492 meters, the León–Asturias border; beyond it Redes, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2001.
• Oviedo (km 578.8) — San Salvador Cathedral with the Cámara Santa, the Arca Santa and the apostle columns with St. James; a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998.

The first Spanish and the first town hall: Valpuesta and Brañosera

Two villages on the route each hold a record you'd never guess by looking at them. Valpuesta, which according to Wikipedia had seven inhabitants in 2011, was from 804 the seat of a diocese of the Kingdom of Asturias, the second after Oviedo. Its archive produced the Cartularios de Valpuesta, copies of charters from the years 804 to 1200, the later version copied in 1236. Their Latin is so shot through with the spoken language that in November 2010 the Real Academia Española declared they contain the oldest traces of Castilian – even before the famous Glosas Emilianenses from La Rioja.

Brañosera, a good 170 kilometers farther on, received a settlement charter on October 13, 824, from Count Munio Núñez and his wife Argilo, which is considered Spain's first Carta Puebla; that's why the village calls itself the country's first town hall and celebrates the Día del Fuero every year on October 13. The old name "Brannia-Ossaria" means something like pastures and bears. There are still bears in the Montaña Palentina today.

And in between, near Tobillas, stands the church Abbot Avito built for his monastery of San Román in 822, according to Wikipedia the oldest church in the Basque Country. On the way to Oviedo you pass three charters from exactly the decades in which the Apostle's tomb was discovered in Galicia.

How Pilgrims Find Their Way onto This Path

Pamplona is one of the great hubs of the pilgrim network. Most people arrive on the Camino Francés from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and Roncesvalles and turn northwest in Pamplona instead of carrying on to Puente la Reina. Coming from Bayonne, you take the Camino de Baztán; it joins the Francés in Arre, a few kilometers before Pamplona. If you only want to walk part of it, start in Vitoria-Gasteiz or Reinosa, both with train stations. Along the way there are more entry points and crossings:

- Agurain/Salvatierra to Armiñón — the Camino Vasco del Interior from Irún runs on the same track for just under 55 kilometers; coming from there, you can turn off toward Oviedo at Armiñón. - Pedrosa de Valdeporres, Cervatos and Cervera de Pisuerga — here the Camino Olvidado from Bilbao touches the route at several points without running alongside it. - Las Salas — the Camino Vadiniense & Lebaniego crosses here on its way from the Liébana to Mansilla de las Mulas. ## Continue the pilgrimage?

Yes – that's the whole point of this route. In Oviedo the Camino Primitivo begins, the road that Alfonso II, as tradition has it, walked to the Apostle's tomb; via Grado, Tineo, Lugo and Melide you reach Santiago de Compostela in about two weeks. Only there do you get the Compostela. Two more routes from other directions also arrive in Oviedo:

• Camino San Salvador — from León over the Pajares, an alternative that branches off the Francés in the opposite direction
• Camino del Norte via Oviedo — the loop by which the coastal route takes in the city, toward Villaviciosa and Avilés

Preparation & Practical Information

Pilgrim passport and app. As on all Spanish routes, you need a pilgrim passport (credencial) to stay in the albergues and to receive the Compostela at the end. It's best to order it online in advance so it reaches you in time for the start of your trip; you only get the Compostela itself in Santiago, if you continue on the Primitivo. Because the waymarking has gaps, the track is indispensable – the easiest way to plan is right in the Camino Ninja App, where you put together your stages and plan suitable accommodation at the same time.

Accommodation. You can count on pilgrim albergues in Pamplona, Agurain, Vitoria and Oviedo, plus the municipal albergue in Alegría-Dulantzi a good kilometer off the route. In between you sleep in hostales, casas rurales and municipal lodgings; call a day ahead, as some places don't open at all outside the season.

Season and gear. From June to mid-October you're on the safe side; in high summer the Llanada and the Ebro shore get hot. Bring rain gear, a water reserve and a power bank for your GPS.

What the journey will cost you

The albergues are cheap: Jesús y María in Pamplona 12 €, Agurain 10 €, Alegría-Dulantzi 4 €, the Albergue de la Catedral in Vitoria 18 to 26 € depending on the season, the El Salvador pilgrim albergue in Oviedo 7.50 € (as of October 2026). In between, hostales and casas rurales usually charge 35 to 60 € for a single room; in Reinosa hotels start at around 35 €. Plan on 45 to 70 € a day for a bed, a bar breakfast and the menú del día, or more like 35 to 50 € per person for two. Honestly, that's expensive for Spain, because the cheap dorms are missing – in return, the menú in the mountain villages often still costs under 15 €, if there's a bar at all.

Getting Here

To the start. Pamplona has a small airport with connections via Madrid, a Renfe train station with trains to Madrid, Barcelona and Zaragoza, and good long-distance buses, for example with ALSA. Larger airports nearby are Bilbao and Biarritz. The route begins in the old town.

Along the way and from the finish. Vitoria-Gasteiz and Reinosa lie on Renfe lines and work well for joining or leaving the route. Oviedo has a train station with direct trains to Madrid and León as well as buses to Asturias Airport; in the Nalón valley, Renfe's local trains connect Laviana and Langreo with Oviedo.

• Rail in Spain: renfe.com — Pamplona, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Reinosa, Oviedo
• Bus: alsa.es — long-distance buses to Pamplona and from Oviedo