Family Camino Sept 2025

[SharXee]

Hello all!

My husband and I have two girls, who will be 9 and almost 11 years old next Fall. We are going on a year sabbatical from the U.S., starting with the Camino Frances. We plan to begin in SJPDP, starting early to mid September 2025.

I did the Camino from Roncesvailles in 2005 when I was studying abroad in Spain, but it’ll be the first Camino for my husband and girls. I’m fluent in Spanish, and the others speak fairly well also. And my husband and eldest daughter speak French. We obviously plan to pack light, do lots of hiking/walking over the summer to prepare our legs and feet (which I didn’t do before my first Camino ), and we have up to two months to complete the whole thing.

Any recommendations for walking with elementary aged kids during Autumn would be much appreciated!

Cheers!

 

[C clearly]

Click on the tag "children" that I have placed under the title of this thread. You should find lots of relevant reading there.

 

[J Willhaus]

That is a really busy time to walk. With a family of 4, I would probably try to look for rooms and beds ahead. It will be much busier than 2005.

 

[Jopo]

Hi, we walked Portugues costal Route in May 2022 with 3 Kids (youngest was 9) and I think it was múch better tíme than september. The beginning of May there were not many pilgrims and to the end of May the Way got bussier.
I would recommend this route and this tíme of year if possible.

 

[trecile]

Instead of the beginning of September which is one of the busiest periods for starting from SJPdP, consider starting in late August.

 

[SharXee]

Instead of the beginning of September which is one of the busiest periods for starting from SJPdP, consider starting in late August.

This is VERY interesting. August is listed as the “busiest month” on the Camino, so we were delaying until September to try to avoid that. We know that many European counties take August off and that many pilgrims are likely only doing the latter section of the Camino, but we were worried that starting in August would be worse. You’re saying that starting in August would actually be better?! This is definitely doable for us if this is the general consensus.

 

[trecile]

August is listed as the “busiest month” on the Camino, so we were delaying until September to try to avoid that.

That's a common misconception based on the fact that August has the most arrivals to Santiago. But that is because it's very popular to walk only the last 100 km, especially during the summer months. You need to look deeper at the patterns of when pilgrims start from St Jean Pied de Port.

This thread should be enlightening:

A tale of two Caminos - What about those crowds?

 

[SharXee]

That's a common misconception based on the fact that August has the most arrivals to Santiago. But that is because it's very popular to walk only the last 100 km, especially during the summer months. You need to look deeper at the patterns of when pilgrims start from St Jean Pied de Port.

This thread should be enlightening:

A tale of two Caminos - What about those crowds?

That is quite enlightening. Thank you very much for that! Even starting in August, which we can do, I imagine all those pilgrims starting in September will soon/eventually catch up with us, since we’ll be going much slower with kiddos than the 26-day pace I took in 2005.

So looks like we’ll be dealing with busy lodging options regardless. We’re really trying to avoid booking too much in advance since we like the idea of “winging it” based on our shared experience of the Camino each day. But maybe this is an unrealistic goal in this day and age.

 

[Peterexpatkiwi]

We’re really trying to avoid booking too much in advance since we like the idea of “winging it” based on our shared experience of the Camino each day. But maybe this is an unrealistic goal in this day and age.

Not necessarily. For every "help, I can't find a bed" post we seem to see a "I never book and I'm fine post". It also depends in large part what type of accommodation you're seeking. Both last year and this year many pilgrims (even during the busiest times) were reporting available beds in the municipals. Which of course you cannot reserve. That said, it might be harder to get four, esp. together.

The generally accepted advice seems to be "book through to Pamplona", and then take it from there. By then you'll have an idea as to numbers on the trail, plus how far you're likely to want to walk each day.

It's always a great idea to start slow, so booking SJPdP, Orrisson/ Borda, Roncesvalles etc would be a sound strategy.

If you were able to start mid July that puts you roughly two weeks ahead of the Pack, even walking slowly it will take even the fastest walkers a long time to catch up!
The only disadvantage is that it's a tad warm.

 

[SharXee]

Not necessarily. For every "help, I can't find a bed" post we seem to see a "I never book and I'm fine post". It also depends in large part what type of accommodation you're seeking. Both last year and this year many pilgrims (even during the busiest times) were reporting available beds in the municipals. Which of course you cannot reserve. That said, it might be harder to get four, esp. together.

The generally accepted advice seems to be "book through to Pamplona", and then take it from there. By then you'll have an idea as to numbers on the trail, plus how far you're likely to want to walk each day.

It's always a great idea to start slow, so booking SJPdP, Orrisson/ Borda, Roncesvalles etc would be a sound strategy.

If you were able to start mid July that puts you roughly two weeks ahead of the Pack, even walking slowly it will take even the fastest walkers a long time to catch up!
The only disadvantage is that it's a tad warm.

Sound advice. And good to hear the municiples often have beds. We often stay in hostels with our kids now when traveling, so I think this option would work for us. Good to know we may have to split up into pairs occasionally. And we had already planned to book through Roncesvailles but will definitely extend that plan based on the Pamplona mantra! We now are leaning towards leaving later in September since we’d prefer cooler, albeit rainier, weather. Then as we walked, a big chunk of the Sept hoard would slowly pull away from us, and maybe accommodations would loosen up? We’d probably end up finishing in early to mid November this way.

 

[Peterexpatkiwi]

It seems that the vast majority start in the first two weeks, from weeks three onwards things start to tail off apparently. ( I'm sure others will chip in with their personal experience in due course).

Another strategy is to start mid week, an awful lot of people start on the weekends. A Wednesday or Thursday departure avoids those that have arrived in over the weekend.
Another thing to consider is when you're actually arriving in Europe. If you will already be here then jet lag won't be an issue. If not it's never a bad ploy to give yourself 24 hours on the ground before starting out. Although with 11 and 13 year olds - I guess it depends if they like to sleep in or not (In my experience from 14 or 15 onwards that's a given!).
It depends on how happy the kids are just to wander around a small town and sightsee - some teenagers can't stand it. (Although you could of course just spend your first night in whichever major city you arrive in and then move on through the next day rather than have two nights in SJPdP. )
It also depends on when you are going to arrive in town - ie early or late. But that's just the small stuff.

As to accommodation remember that it may well be cheaper for you to book private rooms (pensions etc)rather than hostels. The limiting element there is that you (and more importantly your kids) may miss out on the social aspect of an Albergue.
Anytime you are looking to book remember that only a proportion of the beds are typically listed on platforms like booking.com, Airbnb etc. So just because the various platforms say that everything is full does not mean that it is. Far from it.

The rest you either need to email, phone or send a WhatsApp message to. The latter being by far the more popular. Whilst there are always a few accommodation providers that don't have WhatsApp, the vast majority do. Not only that, some will take days to respond to an email (if they ever do) whereas you are likely to get a WhatsApp response very quickly. If you don't already have WhatsApp it's well worth downloading. It's how the vast majority of us pilgrims keep in touch, and the 'share location' function is brilliant if you need to call a taxi. (It seems that all Spanish taxi drivers have this!). Or simply want to meet up with someone.

There's heaps more information here on the forum and you've still got plenty of time to ask questions. Enjoy the planning!

 

[David Tallan]

That is quite enlightening. Thank you very much for that! Even starting in August, which we can do, I imagine all those pilgrims starting in September will soon/eventually catch up with us, since we’ll be going much slower with kiddos than the 26-day pace I took in 2005.

So looks like we’ll be dealing with busy lodging options regardless. We’re really trying to avoid booking too much in advance since we like the idea of “winging it” based on our shared experience of the Camino each day. But maybe this is an unrealistic goal in this day and age.

Not necessarily (everyone catching up). When I was walking in 2016, there was a Korean family that was walking at the same time as us with two kids (aged 5 and 7), and they were walking the same 20ish km we were every day. And the kids had more energy at the end of the day than we did!

 

[Gumba]

Our first Camino, our boys were 9 and 11, the second they were 11 and 14 - both winter Caminos. Other pilgrims would laugh at us (good naturedly) for always being the last to arrive at the daily destination. What they didn't take into account is that we stopped at almost every playground for a swing or a climb; we'd stop for 10 minutes and watch pretty beetles marching along or climb over rocks or pat the many cats along the way. Our boys did walk faster than us and we would often let them go ahead, they were sensible enough to stop and wait for us if they got too far ahead, it gave them autonomy (sometimes we deliberately walked slower so they would walk and talk together). We told the boys that if they didn't want to walk or if they wanted to get a bus or taxi, then we could - they liked knowing that they had an 'out'. We found it helpful to book ahead as many places we stayed had rooms for 4 people so we could stay in the albergues but have our own private room. The first camino, we stayed in cheap hotels too as they were not much more expensive that 4 people in an albergue. We packed lots of energy food for the afternoon pick-me-up slumps. They had a great time and as parents it was an incredibly family bonding experience. We had limited Spanish skills - but we all tried hard.

Other pilgrims were wonderful with our boys and the small stall holders were in awe of them - generally, the Spanish adore kids! We also got our fair share of open hostility from a minority of pilgrims giving us dirty looks and questioning our parenting skills for 'forcing' our children to walk the camino. But bugger them!

Have a wonderful experience