Is there a minimum daily mileage?

[CaminoJoy123]

Every albergue asks everyone to leave every morning. But does the next albergue check your mileage to make sure you actually walked from the previous "stage"?

Thinking of times when the pilgrim is injured or tired.

Can you just walk across town to a new albergue instead of actually leaving town?

How far do you have to walk to be admitted to an albergue ?

 

[Anemone del Camino]

If you are injurred, most albergues will let you spend an extra day or two. Some may require a doctor's note. Others not.

 

[Kanga]

Commercial albergues make their own rules, and will probably allow you to stay two nights. For others I've not had any problems on days where I have walked from one village to another, only 6 or 7 km apart. Certainly there is no specific rule about how far you should walk each day. I know of people who stayed at the parochial albergue in Burgos, and then walked a few hundred metres to stay a second night in the municipal.

 

[whariwharangi]

Usually the doors are closed till at least 3PM so walking across town then results in a long wait.

Some albergues will store your stuff and let you stay a second night but usually you're out in the street for the day. It depends somewhat on how many people arrive that day.

There is anecdotal discussion of Granon, a popular albergue, requiring that you've walked a minimum arbitrary distance ... part of this is to make it fair on people who have walked a long way and have less options to keep going to find a bed.

 

[notion900]

'Stages' are basically a thing made up by guidebooks. They don't really exist in practice, except on some routes like the Plata where the towns are few and far apart, so there is little choice about where to stop. Where there are plenty of accommodation options, people stop where they like. The pilgrim office puts no limit on how long you take for your pilgrimage, so for an albergue to do so would be out of order.

Having said that, public and parish albergues will certainly check your recent stamps, to make sure you are actually making some sort of logical progress and not just albergue hopping for tourism purposes.

 

[dougfitz]

Having said that, public and parish albergues will certainly check your recent stamps, to make sure you are actually making some sort of logical progress and not just albergue hopping for tourism purposes.

As a hospitalero, I had no such motive in checking pilgrims' credencials. I was much more interested in having a chat about where the pilgrim had been and how they were feeling if they had done a long day.

 

[dougfitz]

There is anecdotal discussion of Granon, a popular albergue, requiring that you've walked a minimum arbitrary distance

My (older) edition of Brierley states that the parish albergue at Granon is 'reserved for those pilgrims who have travelled from further back than Santo Domingo'. I stayed at the Albergue de Carrasquedo last year, so I don't know if that restriction is still applied.