alternate ways to santiago

[Nanc]

I am interested, especially in light of the traffic on the CF this year, of finding alternate ways into Santiago.
The Invierno sounds interesting but I am not sure about handling that many days of 30Km, and about traveling with such poor Spanish as I have

Are there parallel routes to the CF in that last 100km? Can you get sellos off the Camno?
Nanc

 

[jefferyonthecamino]

I am interested, especially in light of the traffic on the CF this year, of finding alternate ways into Santiago.
The Invierno sounds interesting but I am not sure about handling that many days of 30Km, and about traveling with such poor Spanish as I have

Are there parallel routes to the CF in that last 100km? Can you get sellos off the Camno?
Nanc

None parallel, just the usual suspects, probably best second option for many reasons is the Portuguese Camino
and yes, any stamp is a valid stamp as long as it is coherent to your Camino

 

[Castilian]

If I understood it correctly (let me know if I didn't understand it correctly), you want to walk the Camino Francés and leave it at some point to continue on another camino to Santiago in order to avoid the most crowded part of the Camino Francés.

The Camino de Invierno would be the obvious option.

Another option would be to take the Camino del Salvador from León to Oviedo and continue from Oviedo to Melide on the Camino Primitivo but once in Melide you could continue to Santiago de Compostela (roughly 50-55 kms away) on the Camino Francés...

If you don't bother to walk part of the route out of a camino route, you could take the Camino del Salvador from León to Oviedo, walk the GR100 from Oviedo to Gijón and continue from Gijón on the Camino del Norte till Arzúa but from Arzúa to Santiago de Compostela (roughly 40 kms) you would be once again in the Camino Francés... A way to avoid it (the Camino Francés) would be to walk on the Camino del Norte till Ribadeo continuing from Ribadeo on the Ruta do Mar (look for info about it on the Ruta do Mar area of the forum) till you reach the Camino Inglés from where you would continue to Santiago de Compostela.

Another option is to walk the Camino Francés till Astorga. Once in Astorga walk backwards on the Vía de la Plata till Benavente (roughly 70 kms) continuing from Benavente on the Camino Sanabrés till Santiago de Compostela. But walking backwards may be challenging because there's no signalling (i.e.: there's just signalling in the opposite direction)...