Overview

The Brierley Route is based on the route recommended by Camino veteran John Brierley in his popular English-language hardcopy guidebook, A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago.

The Brierley Route is a suitable option for just about all pilgrims – 33 walking days is a good balance between ‘getting it done’ and not over-doing it. For the most part, the communities the guide recommends for over-nighting (ie, the end points for each stage) are fairly good, with the selected communities usually being interesting and having decent accommodation options (though we’d take Zubiri over Larrasoaña). The Brierley Route seems to be the most popular path taken by English-speaking pilgrims – if you are looking for other English-speaking pilgrims to meet up with, this is a good choice.

The downside to the Brierley route is that it is the most popular path taken by English-speaking pilgrims – if you are looking to somewhat avoid the all-out daily rush to the next albergue, you may want to slightly modify this route so that you are a bit ‘off-schedule’ relative to everyone else. That said, keep in mind that English-speaking pilgrims still represent a very small percentage of overall pilgrims (albeit a growing percentage).

The Brierley Route used here follows the ‘recommended’ route in the Brierley guidebook. There are some small differences, mainly in some of the paths through larger communities, but it is mostly the same including the same stage breaks.