French Way

Yeah, big shifts there.

The Portuguese Porto to Valencia route has grown so rapidly that it is now legitimately threatening the traditional French hegemony of the pilgrimage.

We are even seeing reports of massive influxes of German pilgrims crossing paths in Barcelos.

This is a major economic shift.

For decades, the French routes held the monopoly on the pilgrimage economy.

The explosive growth of the Portuguese route is effectively decentralizing tourism.

It's spreading the wealth.

... chat or afterwards, and I can stick it in the show notes so people know where that is.

So listen, my, uh, my experience of the last 100K pretty much mirrors yours, where I'd walked for 700 or so K on the Camino Frances.

Yeah.

I was feeling so at peace, so at ease.

the last annual statistics 'cause we're still in 2026.

Recording this in October 20- 2026, if anyone's listening to this in the future.

2025, approximately of 162,000 pilgrims started the Caminos Frances in Sarria.

So 162,000.

Or a magazine, for instance, like the Fantasy Magazine.

And that is something I... to kind of circle back to the whole Camino project, that is something that I can do in addition to the longer book with these daily adventures where you stay very close to my personal experience, but to just take the material that I've recorded on location where I tell the story or I interview people about saints, And just do a simpler book, which is just a guide of 40 saints that you can encounter when you walk the Camino Frances.

Because I have the locations, I have the photos.

And I've already... all the stories.

It's a very tough, mountainous climb.

And then I would approach Santiago... following a path that not many pilgrims take.

So hopefully it will be less crowded than the last part of the Camino Frances last year, or this year actually.

Already feels like last year.

And so I started in France and then...

I did the Camino Francais.

So it starts in France, but most of it is actually in Spain.

You drop into Spain very quickly.

And I received a message via Facebook a few weeks ago.

Father John Ray Rayner was completing the Camino Norte, the pilgrimage that begins in Arun in the Basque country before following the north coast of Spain to Asturias and then taking a left-hand turn to meet the Camino Frances in Azua.

Father John Ray was born in the Philippines but now preaches at a parish here in Australia in Bendigo.

And in the course of my research for the podcast, I have truly loved reading his thoughts, not just his journaling from the Camino, but also his writing about the challenges of being a leader in a rural Catholic parish.

And let's also say this, too.

Some of these things that we're going to discuss, we're talking about the Camino Frances because that's what I did.

That's predominantly the most focused thing that we are going to talk about today because that's what I walked and then what I researched and what I know.

There's a lot of other Caminos.

So when people are hearing Camino Frances, how is that different than walking the Camino de Santiago? Anybody that walks from one of these routes all over the world to Santiago de Compostela is a Camino.

The Camino Frances is just one of the oldest and most typical routes.

It starts in France, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, and it walks all the way to Santiago.

So we're talking about that one, but a lot of these tips and things apply to almost all the routes.