The most well-known pilgrimage path in the world, but is it ever too late to walk it?

A bright woman is walking slowly on crutches an hour or so into my Camino de Santiago adventure, and I can’t get the picture of her smile out of my head. She tells me, “You’re an inspiration,” and I humbly respond that she is the one who is inspired. Receive expert insights, hidden treasures, and special travel advice sent straight to your inbox. There are fourteen of us on a senior-only guided walk, including me. However, it turns out that we are not the only ones of a particular age. The Camino de Santiago has been traversed by pilgrims of all ages, sizes, and forms for a millennium, and this trend is continuing in 2025. This pilgrimage on the bucket list is much more well-liked than before.

The Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia in northwest Spain, is the end of nine pilgrimage routes of varying lengths that many people believe contain the remains of the apostle St. James.

Australian walking specialist UTracks is offering one of the first guided Camino walks for senior travellers. Ranging between nine and 18 kilometres a day, you cover those 115 kilometres in a leisurely nine days. And you stay in atmospheric inns with comfy beds and ensuites, enjoy delicious local foods and get your luggage transferred daily. All you carry is your day pack and your joie de vivre. Our group is primarily from Australia, as well as two Americans and one Brit. We gather in late May on the sunny deck of a hotel in Sarria for a pre-walk briefing with our enthusiastic young Galician guide Pedro. He explains that we can walk at our own pace and he’ll arrange meeting spots along the route. We sign up to a WhatsApp group for ease of communication. At a glance, I put most people in their 60s, with a couple in their 50s. I later learn that at least five people are in their 70s but, as the saying goes, 70 is the new 50 and most people look fit and raring to go. A group of UTracks walkers, including the writer at left. Picture: Maria Lara Bright and fresh, we begin walking together through the old town of Sarria and into the countryside, where the path turns to dirt beside a rushing stream and an old man sells hand-carved walking sticks for a mere 10 euros. We climb a hill through a forest of oak and chestnut trees and stop to get our first Camino passport stamp from a local who’s offering fresh fruit for a donation. I chat with Susanne from New York and Susana from Wollongong in our group. Both tell me that the Camino has been on their bucket list for ages. Out into the sunshine, walking past just-ploughed fields framed with apple blossoms, I smile at three teenage girls in short shorts walking with linked arms. A priest in black prays with his rosary as a farmer forks hay. Blond Galician cows chew green grass. A spring gurgles beneath a stone wall. Middle-aged women in groups of two and three, chat animatedly as they pass a slender woman (who looks like she’s struggling with cancer), hand in hand with her partner, both wearing red pants. Galicia’s ever-present horreos (granaries) perched on toadstool-like stone stilts, witness it all.