Sobrado dos Monxes to Arzúa
The junction
- Distance
- 22 km
- Climb
- 350 m up, 470 m down
- Ground
- 380 to 560 m
- Time
- 5 to 7 hours
- Difficulty
- moderate
- Underfoot
- forest, dirt, paved
Where this day sits on the Camino del Norte
Above, the highest and lowest ground of each of its 34 stages. Below, the word each day is given.
From open-pilgrimages: each stage's highest and lowest ground and its interior theme.
The day
At Arzúa the Camino del Norte ends. The yellow arrows merge with the arrows of the Camino Francés and from here the two routes are one. The density of walkers triples in a single afternoon. Pilgrims who have come from Ferrol on the Inglés, from Oviedo on the Primitivo, from Irún on the Norte, from St. Jean Pied de Port on the Francés — all arrive in Arzúa within days of each other. The cafés are crowded. The albergues fill by 14:00. It can feel overwhelming after thirty quiet days on the Norte. But this is the old shape of the Camino: many rivers into one. From Arzúa it is two days to Santiago on the shared path (19.3 km to O Pedrouzo, then 19.4 km to Santiago), documented in routes/camino-frances/stages.json stages 31-32. The Norte proper ends here, at the junction.
What pilgrims often meet here
- The moment the Norte arrows meet the Francés arrows
- Entering Arzúa and seeing three times as many pilgrims as yesterday
- Arzúa's famous queso — a round soft cow's-milk cheese, part of the Camino food tradition
- The strange feeling of ending a route that is not yet in Santiago
- Looking at Santiago on the map for the first time with the distance in tens of kilometres, not hundreds
Your solitary Camino has just merged with thousands of others. What does belonging feel like after so much solitude?
The ground
The final native Norte stage. Rolling Galician countryside through Boimorto to Arzúa, where the Norte meets the Camino Francés. At Arzúa the two routes merge and the final 39 km to Santiago follows the Francés path. From here the density of pilgrims increases dramatically.
The light
Sunrise and sunset in Sobrado dos Monxes depend on the day you walk.
Walk it with Pilgrim
In Pilgrim's Honor mode you can walk this stage as it is drawn here, and save its maps for days with no signal. The morning opens with this day's word, The junction, and its story. When you arrive, it asks the question above, and you can answer out loud. Your walk stays on your phone.
With Pilgrim on your phone, this opens the stage, ready to begin. Without it, you'll see the stage and where to get the app.