The Madrid Route - new edition of the guide

The route passes the Roman Aqueduct in Segovia

I'm pleased to tell you that the third edition of the CSJ guide to the route from Madrid to Sahagún is now available to download here: Guide: Camino de Madrid (Madrid to Sahagún)

This guide is one of a series of on-line guides published by the Confraternity of Saint James http://www.csj.org.uk/guides-online.htm and will also soon be available on the CSJ website. If you download a guide please leave a donation.

The on-line guides are written by pilgrims and are kept up to date with the information which pilgrims send to the editor when they have walked a route. Pilgrims providing guides for other pilgrims. The guides are updated regularly and up dates are available here http://www.csj.org.uk/guides.htm

Max walking the route

I wrote the second edition of the guide and I received a very helpful e mail from a pilgrim called Max Long. He had walked the route and had a lot of current information. I'm glad to say with very little persuasion Max agreed to edit the third edition and the fruit of his hard work is now available.

This edition of the guide has up to date information on accommodation,more walking notes, better elevation graphs and topographical maps to give some context. The maps are thanks to the work of another pilgrim Peter Robbins http://pilgrim.peterrobins.co.uk/

A summary of the route:
The way from Madrid to Sahagún designated by the Amigos de los Caminos de Santiago de Madrid was never a major historic pilgrimage route but there are documented accounts of pilgrims who passed that way. Regained from the Moors early in the Reconquest, Madrid grew in size and prosperity to become a medium-sized town by the time Felipe II chose it as his capital in the sixteenth-century. Its population and economy grew further and today Madrid is a major, modern, European capital city. With the renewal of interest in the Jacobean pilgrimage in the twentieth-century, especially its huge popularity in recent years, the Madrid Amigos decided to create this route to enable pilgrims from Madrid and central Spain to journey to the Camino Francés without taking transport. The route is about 320kms long and can be walked in about 12 days. However, Segovia, Simancas (for Valladolid) and Medina de Rioseco merit more than a brief visit.

The way is excellently waymarked throughout, so detailed walking directions are generally not necessary. Where they are needed Walking Notes have been provided in this Edition. Physically, the route is easy to walk. With the exception of the climb over the Sierra de Guadarrama, there are no hills or gradients of any significance. Graphs of the elevations throughout the route have been included in this edition, although these  are to be read with caution as they merely indicate the height difference between towns rather than being an accurate relief graph of the route.

Remarkably for such a direct route - almost a straight line from Madrid to Sahagún - there is virtually no road walking. The route uses footpaths, Vias Pecuarias (VPs), cañadas, farm and forestry tracks and even a short stretch of paved Roman road, and the paths are clear and well maintained. As a consequence, the journey is stress-free and one which lends itself to reflection and contemplation, a true pilgrimage route. But the corollary is that there are fewer towns, villages or pilgrims than on other routes with the exception of parts of the Via de la Plata, which the Madrid route closely resembles.

Buen Camino!

Guide: Camino de Madrid (Madrid to Sahagún)