The Hard Coastal Road That Was Once the Safe One

The Northern Way is the most demanding of the main roads to Santiago, and the reason it exists at all is a fact of medieval security rather than scenery.

The coast, and the climbing

The route runs west from Irun on the French frontier along the Basque, Cantabrian and Asturian coast, through San Sebastian, Bilbao, Santander and Gijon, before turning inland for Santiago. It is harder than the French road by a wide margin, with far more cumulative ascent as it crosses the headlands and river valleys of the northern seaboard, and it carries fewer walkers and fewer services in consequence.

Older than the road that replaced it

The coastal road was the practical one in the earliest centuries of the pilgrimage, when much of the interior of the peninsula was under Muslim control or simply unsafe for travellers. In that sense it is arguably older as a working route than the inland French way that later superseded it once the meseta became secure. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2015 as part of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in the north of Spain, a recognition that fixed its standing as a historic route in its own right rather than a scenic alternative.