Distance certificate for Camino starting on less well known routes outside Spain

t2andreo said:

Yes, any CONTIGUOUS (connecting) path that links to an accredited and acknowledged French, Spanish or Portuguese Camino route can be claimed on the distance certificate. The key to establishing the route of travel and stopping points has been the sello (rubber stamp) in your credencial.

While many places out of Southern France, Spain and Portugal might not have a special stamp for Camino / pilgrim use, they WILL always have a rubber stamp for business use. This stamp will have the name address, phone number, and perhaps a tax ID engraved on it.

For example, what does any legitimate business do when the computer cash register goes down? Answer: if they are trying to be tax-compliant with the authorities, they use their business rubber stamp to generate manual / paper receipts.

In my personal experience, I have obtained sellos in gas stations, wineries off the route, pharmacies, a small town tienda, a supermercado, and even a police station once.

These sellos / stamps are not Camino-fancy. But, they ARE sufficient for establishing that you were at that place, in chronological order. Affixing a date is done manually in any case.

Hope this helps the dialog.

Tom

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Kathar1na said:

I never asked for a distance certificate at the Oficina del Peregrino in Santiago and I walked for about 600 km or more before I even knew that one can or does get stamps on the chemins de Compostelle and on the Jakobswege so I am not really competent to reply but I reply nevertheless.

I can confirm that you can't get stamps everywhere the further away from Santiago you are. Small businesses like baker's and grocery shops may well have a stamp for administrative purposes but they don't keep the appropriate gear in the shop or store where they serve their everyday customers. If it is important to you you may be more lucky at tourist offices, town halls and perhaps even churches but they may be out of your way or have inconvenient opening times and are simply not worth the time and effort. Post offices may be the most promising stop where to get a stamp but again they may be closed if and when you pass.

Something I did for myself and just for fun: I retraced my steps in Google Earth and I now have a nice visual of my walk from home to Santiago plus a record of how many km I walked because the GE website / app calculates the length of every section that I walked. I assume, without knowing, that it is sufficient to make your distance plausible for the Oficina, you don't have to document every bit of such a long distance with stamps and they may happily accept it when you present them with a credible number of total kilometres walked.

Die Worte Guter Weg wollen mir einfach nicht über die Lippen kommen, also sage ich wie gewohnt: Buen Camino!

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