QUOTE="MarkyD, post: 874582, member: 82926"]
Good morning, afternoon, evening to everyone who has been on El Norte and found good ways to reduce/avoid too much tarmac crunching, especially the more dangerous sections.
I'm interested to find out information from anyone who has any good tips or could recommend an app that shows not only the official route, but also the options that might take me away from the roads more.
I've seen some people use Wikiloc, but that seems to give you a library of actual walks recorded by people. Alternatively, I've seen people like Efrén Gónzalez use Google maps to just plot his own path as and when he needed to.
Alternatively, I could use a guide book with decent maps.
What sayest the knowlegeable and experienced folk out there in the Caminodom? I hope to be starting from Villaviciosa in about a week's time (assuming the other regions in Spain will allow people like me from Madrid to even enter their regions, let alone walk from Asturias to Galicia)
[/QUOTE]
I like maps.me but I want to point out a limitation here.
With maps.me you will need to download a track of the route also (besides base maps of the area(s) you will walk). You will be able to see trails and roads that you may want to use instead of the track you downloaded but they will not be highlighted for you unless you find and download those tracks too. It is a good app but if you are looking for one that shows you ways to go and helps you decide whether it is worth it to go that way you will want a different app.
I just stumbled on Windy Maps, which is free and is like maps.me, except that the caminos, and the alternatives, including those for the Norte, are already on there and marked as either the Camino itself or as an alternativo, meaning you don't have to download anything extra. In fact, if you have data, you don't even have to download anything at all. The map of Spain. and everywhere else, will show up right away when you open the app. Of course, if you don't have data, you can easily download any section of the world you need, and it will work fine. You can also plot a track, and the app will even give you voice directions (if you want such a thing), whether you have data or not. It also shows contour lines better than maps.me does.
The only (minor) hitch is that the camino you want won't be obvious in the long view. You'll have to close in on the area you'll be in before you see the camino. To see what I mean, download the app. and then focus in on Irun, the start of the Norte. Play with the magnification until you see the camino as a marked blue line heading north-north-west out of town to a point where it splits: the main camino goes left and its alternative is on the right. The same is true with all the other alternative noted by Peregrina 2000 (and others). They're all right there for you and you don't need to do anything further or play around with downloading other tracks.
Of course, you're probably also going to want some kind of guidebook or guidance on which alternatives are worth taking.
Finally, if you don't like mapping apps at all, you can get the Wisely / Wise Pilgrim app. for around $5. Its gps tracks also show the alternatives.
Overall, since Windy Maps and maps.me are free, and Wisely (or Buen Camino) are very cheap, you can just download all of them and use whatever works best for you.