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I tracked the daily Compostelas given last year, but only from mid-August. The peak day was August 24 (some portion of the pilgrims started in SJPdP on about July 20), when 2,128 were awarded. The Pilgrim Office is open twelve hours, so that was nearly 200 per hour, or three per minute! Depending on who you believe, there are 400 or 800 beds in Monte do Gozo. The crowd may have filled it five times over. Competing for a hotel in Santiago were additional thousands of car and bus visitors.
It is a busy time of the year...
They do, in part because they leave Sarria on the previous weekend. Friday arrivals may have waited until Saturday to get Compostelas, so there is some uncertainty on actual arrivals.more pilgrims are likely to reach Santiago during the weekend
Hi, Mark,That's a very interesting statistic. When you consider that 31,606 Compostelas were awarded in August to pilgrims who walked the Frances (from wherever) and that accounted for 68% of the total Compostelas registered for that month and that August 24 was a Saturday... it perhaps suggests two points that feel intuitively true - the surge in August accelerates through the month and that proportionally speaking more pilgrims are likely to reach Santiago during the weekend.
That suggests - maybe, just maybe - arriving in Santiago by the middle of the month ideally on a week-day might be the best way to avoid the worst of the crowds. Either that or I'm clutching at straws! ;-)
I'm surprised there isn't a log kept online somewhere with the daily Compostelas. With those numbers on hand, it would be a lot easier to interpret the ebb and flow of pilgrims. The monthly figures are extremely useful, but daily stats would be amazing. I might be revealing a very sad side to my personality with statements like that!!! ;-)
Try contact @JohnnieWalker , he might help you with daily stats.Thanks for the link. If only there was an archive of the daily numbers on the website!
Hi! I tried to work up an Excel spreadsheet showing how many pilgrims would be spread along the Camino at any given time based on the monthly arrival figures and it's a bit of a nightmare for a range of reasons. Daily figures would definitely help, but monthly figures can be approximately allocated across a month based on the overall trend (i.e in May more are likely to arrive towards the end of the month than the beginning). We can assume that people take a certain average number of days to complete it and count back to where they would have (approximately) been/started walking on a certain day.I'm surprised there isn't a log kept online somewhere with the daily Compostelas. With those numbers on hand, it would be a lot easier to interpret the ebb and flow of pilgrims. The monthly figures are extremely useful, but daily stats would be amazing. I might be revealing a very sad side to my personality with statements like that!!! ;-)
In the statistics given by the office in SdC there are also the numbers of what camino people did and where the started. Is it difficult to sort that out?One of the biggest challenges is that the CF does not exist in isolation - other Caminos join it at Puente la Reina, Sahagun etc including on the final stretch from Sarria. These Caminos may have an even stronger seasonal pattern due to weather conditions on mountains, availability of albergues etc. In some cases you have to guess at which point someone starting in a certain place joined it.
I didn't walk like this before, but I suppose it does go like that. I'm sure JohnnyWalker has more info on that.People walking in sections over several visits would almost exclusively have started beyond Sarria, but as far as I know there is no record of where these people tend to start or how many visits it take to complete their pilgrimage. I'd guess they'd be more likely than average to begin at wherever they perceive 'the start' to be, so would be well represented in the numbers coming from SJPP, Roncesvalles etc, This assumes they use the same credencial so Pilgrim Office counts them from their first visit and not just their last.
It will never be 100% absolute right figures but gives a very good indication. Untill more info would be available we can assume that everywhere on the camino people walk without getting a compostella. But, for (nearly) sure all the people do walk with a credential. To get an indication for this amount of people it is possible to compare the amount of compostella's handed out in SJPdP and arrivals in SdC.Any figures coming from such an exercise would only be relative rather than absolute, so we could say that, for example, in June Carrion de los Condes has 120% of its annual average (that's just a made up figure, by the way!). As a result the numbers who don't collect a Compostela could be largely ignored unless we have some evidence that these pilgrims have any particular characteristics.
What about starting towards the end of May? Is that busier than starting in August?
I am planning a late May (22nd ish) start from Roncesvalles or Pamplona ending early July. I am now wondering if that will put me at the busiest time.
My other Option is Mid August start to the end of Sept.
It's great to see someone trying to figure it all out. Thanks.
The Pilgrim Office simply asks the starting point and not the route.
Thus...if you start at somewhere on the Camino del Norte it will reflect that. If you start on the CP that will be shown.
Tyrrek, chapeau, you have put a lot of (technical) thinking in your worksheet.[...] The workbook uses the published monthly pilgrim statistics from the Pilgrim Office in Santiago de Compostela to estimate daily pilgrim flows across the Camino Frances over the course of a year.[...]
I don't know what that is, Johnnie. Is that a reference to 'Valkyries' - deciding how many pilgrims survive and how many are slain en route?But Tyrrek will the model reach the WAGNER standard?
There won't be any distressed pilgrims: they all have WiFi access and GPS, not forgetting the useful (most useful[...] I deliberately didn't go near the accommodation side of things and make that point in the notes. I don't want to be chased down and sued by distressed pilgrims.
What if the price of the Euro deters all of the north American from flying and spending time in Spain? Run those numbers, why not!
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