Having just finished my 4th Camino, the Aragonés, here is a bit of a comparison between the Francés, Norte, Primitivo and Aragonés to build on my previous analysis of the Francés and Norte (click here for that post):
I loved the Aragonés! It is wild and beautiful, we were very few pilgrims on the trail -about a dozen or so, most days I did not bump into any pilgrims! There are very few albergues and they are stage distance apart (with few exceptions), so we were the same pilgrims every evening at the end of the stage.
At around 7 days before it joins the Francés at Puente la Reina, it is a bit short. That is the worst thing about the Aragonés.
My all time favorite so far is the Primitivo due to the rugged beauty and the three days right in the middle which are quite hilly and “uncivilized.” It lacks the “spiritual” component of the Francés but makes up for it in natural beauty. At around a dozen days from Oviedo to Santiago it is a perfect “full” Camino.
The Norte is canonically the most beautiful: beautiful beach, beautiful forest, San Sebastian, beautiful beach, beautiful forest, Bilbao, beautiful beach, beautiful forest, Santander, Gijón… you get the idea. Plus, the food. While popular, this route still has far fewer pilgrims than the Francés.
The Francés is like Classic Coke: the most popular, the best known, the oldest (not really, just in modern terms, it was the first one to be rehabilitated in the 80s), and it is the most spiritual: most churches are open -unlike other Caminos, the change of orography makes this Camino “feel” longer. And the cities, with their Gothic cathedrals are impressive: Pamplona, Burgos, and León.
So, my ranking for now is: 1, Primitivo, 2, Aragonés, 3, Norte, and 4, Francés. Of course, you could start your Camino with the Aragonés and then hook up with the Francés, but you would miss crossing the Pyrenees, and the Navarra hills to Pamplona. On the other hand, by then the early crowds will be a bit more spread out…
Yes silly, of course I am thinking of next year’s Camino, but you will have to stay tuned to this blog for more!
Antonioyrocinante's Blog 
Spent just under two weeks on the camino Invierno last month. Highly recommend! At most there were four of us in an albergue on any given night. There were so few of us that the townspeople are still kind of intrigued by us and not completely sick of pilgrims, lol. I wanted a route that would give me the sense of what it must’ve been like before the Camino Francès became so popular. And this one definitely gave me that sense!
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Thanks, yes the Camino de Invierno is definitely on the short list, wink, wink…
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