Camino del Norte Detailed City Maps

[Jacquie Cattanach]

I am looking for advise on where to find detailed city maps, such as Bilbao, San Sebastian, with the camino route marked on the map. My reason is as I look for accommodation, I don't want to venture far off of the camino route. I remember on our last camino, when we arrived in a town, we didn't feel like walking all over town looking for our accommodation.

Thanks,

 

[peregrina2000]

Hi jacquie and welcome to the forum. I'm not the tech expert by any means but one thing that should work well would be to zoom in on GPS tracks for the different stages. For instance, this link shows Irun to Bilbao, and by searching around a bit on wikiloc.com you should find what you need.

http://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=10115260

 

[spursfan]

I am looking for advise on where to find detailed city maps, such as Bilbao, San Sebastian, with the camino route marked on the map. My reason is as I look for accommodation, I don't want to venture far off of the camino route. I remember on our last camino, when we arrived in a town, we didn't feel like walking all over town looking for our accommodation.

Thanks,

You should probably buy a guide - Dave Whitson's "The Northern Caminos" book published by Cicerone has good maps of the whole route as well as the routes through cities marked with a marker pen - there's no one perfect solution to your probel - I also looked for supermercados and printed out bits from Google maps - having said that, there were also times when I didn't know where I was heading for and asked a few of the locals

 

[Dave]

Hi Jacquie--if you go to the updates page (linked here) on our website, you can find a list of GPS tracks for the route that parallel the stages in our book. Scroll down a little and look on the right margin. These are all publicly accessible, wikiloc pages, but we've confirmed their general fidelity to the route. You can zoom in pretty closely on each one, in order to help you scope out accommodation options.

After we re-walk this summer, we'll have updated gps tracks and city maps, but I hope this gets you through in the meantime.

Dave

 

[Jacquie Cattanach]

Hi jacquie and welcome to the forum. I'm not the tech expert by any means but one thing that should work well would be to zoom in on GPS tracks for the different stages. For instance, this link shows Irun to Bilbao, and by searching around a bit on wikiloc.com you should find what you need.

http://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=10115260

This is awesome, the kind of detail I am looking for - thank you.

 

[Jacquie Cattanach]

Hi Jacquie--if you go to the updates page (linked here) on our website, you can find a list of GPS tracks for the route that parallel the stages in our book. Scroll down a little and look on the right margin. These are all publicly accessible, wikiloc pages, but we've confirmed their general fidelity to the route. You can zoom in pretty closely on each one, in order to help you scope out accommodation options.

After we re-walk this summer, we'll have updated gps tracks and city maps, but I hope this gets you through in the meantime.

Dave

Thanks Dave. We have your book and I have just been playing around in Wikiloc and this is the kind of detail I was looking for throughout the bigger cities.

 

[Isca-camigo]

The Peter Robins Walking Pilgrim site which may( or may not) be closing down soon can also provide detailed maps from various sources, you can zoom in as far as you want. If you want to use them then print the pages pronto, they may not be here tomorrow https://pilgrim.peterrobins.co.uk/routes/ click the modern routes tab

 

[Kurt5280]

I recommend Guia Practica del Camino del Norte (Costa y Primitivo) (http://guias.editorialbuencamino.com/productos/guia-del-camino-del-norte-costa-y-primitivo) (in Spanish but very user friendly maps even if you don't read Spanish)...which shows the Camino del Norte, alternative routes, danger and caution areas, steep uphills and downhills, albergues, cathedrals, points of interest, and scenic lookouts...and it is the best guide I have found on the Camino del Norte and it was recommended by several Camino del Norte Associations.

 

[spursfan]

I recommend Guia Practica del Camino del Norte (Costa y Primitivo) (http://guias.editorialbuencamino.com/productos/guia-del-camino-del-norte-costa-y-primitivo) (in Spanish but very user friendly maps even if you don't read Spanish)...which shows the Camino del Norte, alternative routes, danger and caution areas, steep uphills and downhills, albergues, cathedrals, points of interest, and scenic lookouts...and it is the best guide I have found on the Camino del Norte and it was recommended by several Camino del Norte Associations.

Yes, it's good - but it actually has very few detailed town plans

 

[spursfan]

Yes, it's good - but it actually has very few detailed town plans

Let me be a bit more precise - it has 19 town plans for the Norte, the majority of them full page - but you would need to complement them with Google maps or something similar for the towns without plans

And I do like their page summaries for each stage where they have removed a lot of uneeded details given on traditional maps and left just the A8 and local roads close to the camino plus railway tracks and then marked the camino route and alternatives on top - with distances every 3-5 kms - in fact, I will probably take just those pages from the book for my next camino - and they also have a separate profile diagram for each stage

 

[Kurt5280]

You should probably buy a guide - Dave Whitson's "The Northern Caminos" book published by Cicerone has good maps of the whole route as well as the routes through cities marked with a marker pen

I bought several Camino del Norte guide books looking for annotated maps with alternative routes that I will rate as follows:

1) Guia Practica del Camino del Norte - Editorial Buen Camino - Spanish Version - Average - Requires Average Spanish - Excellent Maps
2) Pilgrim Route The Northern Caminos - Cicerone - English Version - Heavy - Requires Average English - Poor Maps
3) Camino del Norte Ruta Jacobea De La Costa - Desnivel - Spanish Version - Heavy - Requires Average Spanish - Good Maps
4) Los Caminos del Norte #4 Volume 1&2 - Confraternity of Saint James - English Version - Light - Requires Average English - No Maps
5) Camino del Norte Jakobsweg - Rother & Wanderfuhrer - German Version - Light - Requires Average German - Average Maps
6) El Camino de Santiago (2nd Edition) Camino Norte - Anaya Touring - Spanish Version - Heavy - Requires Fluent Spanish - Average Maps

Basically, the Guia Practica del Camino del Norte is the only guide book with annotated maps and alternative routes and if you find a guide book with better maps please let me know because I searched for over a month to find this quality of guide book.