The Way of Saint James by bike: Routes and tips (2025)

How to prepare for the bike path

Plan your Camino in advance: set a date and take advantage of 6-8 months to prepare yourself physically and mentally. Choose your equipment wisely: rigid mountain bike or similar, saddlebags, sleeping bag, clothes and footwear, avoiding unnecessary weight. Train gradually: do weekend rides of about 60 km and daily exercises to get your body used to it, ensuring that you pedal calmly and enjoy the route without suffering.

Bicycle paths

You can choose the way and from the starting point you want to get to Santiago de Compostela. Here is a list of the roads that you can follow according to my experience in cycling:

French Way

The French Way is the ideal route to get started on the Camino de Santiago. It offers the most authentic Jacobean experience, with hostels, communal meals and meetings with pilgrims from all over the world. It does not require great physical preparation, but it does require enthusiasm and time. Go at your own pace, enjoy the route and be flexible with the stages to fully enjoy the adventure.

Portuguese Way

The Camino from Lisbon offers 700 km of history, culture and ocean, ideal for cycling tourists. It goes through cities such as Lisbon, Coimbra, Tomar and Porto, combining flat and cyclable stretches with coastal landscapes. With 11 balanced stages and selected accommodations, it allows you to enjoy the route at your own pace. The coastal variant along the Atlantic adds charm and adventure to the route.

Via de la plata

The Vía de la Plata is a unique and challenging Jacobean route, which crosses Spain from south to north, showing changing landscapes and cultures. Its scarce signage and dirt tracks require attention and preparation, offering adventure to cyclists. After getting to know the French Way, its beauty and authenticity are fully appreciated, making it an unforgettable experience.

North road

The Camino del Norte, or “coast road”, runs along the Cantabrian coast from Irún to Santiago. Its coastal route is more cyclable and easier than the Primitivo, although some complicated deviations require common sense and attention. With good guides or maps, cyclists will enjoy quiet roads, mountain scenery and the spirit of the Camino without sacrificing safety.

Catalan Way

The Catalan Way connects the Mediterranean with the Atlantic, starting in Sant Pere de Rodes or Coll de Panissars and linking Catalonia with Montserrat and the Ebro Way to Logroño. Perfectly cyclable, it combines coastal landscapes, mountains and rivers. It is well signposted, although accommodation is limited, so guidance and planning are recommended.

Salvador Road

The Camino del Salvador links the Cathedral of León with the Cathedral of Oviedo, visiting the relics of the Holy Shroud. The route crosses mountains and the Cantabrian Mountains, with demanding stretches and changeable weather, ideal for prepared cyclists. Signposted and with strategic shelters, it allows you to enjoy landscapes, Romanesque hermitages and the authentic Jacobean experience in three recommended stages.

Camino Primitivo

The Primitive Way is the most beautiful most beautiful but also the hardest of all the Caminos de Santiago. Its mountainous and wooded trails, with stretches that are impossible by bicycle, requirerequire physical preparation and caution. Part of the route can be cycled by roadoffers spectacular spectacular landscapes and traditional villages. Ideal for walkers, cyclists should plan, adapt and approach the route with calm and respect..

My personal experience

My name is Tomás Sánchez and I live in Lloret de Mar, Girona, Spain. I invite you to know one of my passions, the …..Caminode Santiago by mountain bike.

For me, cycling the Camino de Santiago is one of the most rewarding experiences that anyone with a desire for adventure and discovery can have. All you need is a bicycle, some saddlebags and a lot of enthusiasm.

“The most beautiful thing about dreams lies in the path that leads to them.

The most beautiful thing about dreams is dreaming.

If, later on, life is good enough to make your dream come true, thank it and enjoy that reality.

If not, thank him too, knowing that you’re taking the best part of the whole process in your heart.”

The discovery.

Back in September 2005, during a visit to a friend’s house, they told me a story about a relative who had just come back from walking the Camino de Santiago. They showed me the photos and explained what a rewarding experience it had been for that person.

The illusion

From that moment on, something started to push me inside and a force was pushing me to do the Camino too. On the way back home I had already made the firm decision to do the Camino de Santiago.

Preparation.

Said and done. I have always loved mountain biking and my intention is to do it on this means of transport. I started looking at websites like crazy to collect all the information. I dusted off my exercise bike and the next day I changed my daily nap for an hour of exercise. I printed out all the information from the Internet and bought my guidebooks to start getting an idea of the adventure I wanted to plan.

Planning

The first thing I learned is that an adventure like this doesn’t happen overnight. It has to be planned. So the first decision was to set a date for the realization of the dream. May 2006. From that moment on I had almost 8 months ahead of me to prepare myself physically and mentally.

With the information gathered, and in order not to leave everything to the last minute, I began to prepare everything I needed, as recommended by other bicigrinos: clothing, first aid kit, footwear, sleeping bag, etc…

The bicycle

With all the information I had, I began to acquire little by little the necessary material for my adventure. And the first conclusion I came to was that my old bike was not up to much trouble and could not support the trip with many guarantees. Besides, it was not ready to attach the necessary rack to carry the saddlebags. Solution “BIKE FOR SALE”. The best bike for my trip would be a bike with front suspension but rigid in the rear. To carry the luggage in the back is more advisable a rigid bike, the double suspension bikes although they could also serve to make the road, unless you already have one, are not recommended and we do not need a super-machine for this adventure. So, in view of what we have seen, let’s gather information and choose a new companion of fatigues. With a budget of 600.-Euros you can acquire a more than worthy and sufficient bicycle.

Training

Normally I used to go out on weekends on an easy route of about 60 km. approximately. But my intention was to go to the road not to compete but with enough form not to suffer and to be able to do it quietly, enjoying my trip at all times. That’s why my weekend outings became simulations of climbs to mountain passes and downhill trials. I do an hour of static riding every day with a mileage of between 20 and 30 kilometers. I also lengthened my weekend rides by trying to mimic the future stages of the road.

My roads

I managed to materialize my first dream and after that first road came five more…, and I can confirm that it has been worth it. You could say that “I have turned my life into an eternal road to Santiago” and that the road has remained to live forever inside me. Now with all the information I have and with my own personal experience. I live every day with the memory of what has been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. For me it is a pleasure and almost a necessity, to help anyone who needs help or advice on this wonderful journey. So please, you can ask me whatever you think is appropriate, I will try to answer from my modest knowledge.

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Having explained where the bicigrino website comes from and where it is going, serving this page of presentation, comment that in this section “Caminos” you can see classified by route all the information for each of the roads leading to Santiago. I use to develop the web based on my own experience and on the roads that I do myself, for that reason perhaps you will find that some route or some alternative is missing and the reason is precisely that I have not been able to do that road yet.

However, the main roads and routes that cross the Iberian Peninsula and reach Santiago de Compostela are included in this website: the French Way, the Silver Way, the Northern Way, the Primitive Way, the Way of the Savior, the Catalan Way…

I have tried at all times to narrate my adventure and collect the necessary data to facilitate the task to anyone who dreams of cycling the road in any of its variants.

I will progressively add here each of the paths that I manage to make.

Now the bicigrino website is filling up daily with content and services oriented to satisfy the needs of those who dream, plan or make the Camino de Santiago by bicycle.

And to finish and as a moral about the road, I leave you this beautiful story:

The city of wells.

There is a beautiful story about a city of wells. It is a fable that deals with the essence of the journey within ourselves, the search within ourselves. I think that on the road there are two ways to travel, forward and inward. Only a few manage to make that inner journey. Perhaps reading this story will help you to understand how to make that journey.