For more than a thousand years pilgrims have walked to the tomb of Saint James, and this journey follows the Portuguese Way — the quieter, greener route north from Porto through Braga and across the Minho into Galicia. You walk stretches of the Camino itself, on the same waymarked path, without carrying eleven days of it on your back.

The arrival is the point. Padrón, where the boat bearing the Apostle's body is said to have come ashore, gives way to Santiago and the Pilgrim's Mass, with time at the tomb and a free day to let it settle. The return north adds Lugo's Roman walls and Oviedo, whose cathedral guards the Holy Shroud in the Cámara Santa — a treasury of relics that drew pilgrims here long before Santiago did.