Camino de Santiago (biking through Spain)

Some History

The Camino de Santiago, an 800km long pilgrim trail snakes its way east to west across northern Spain.  People have been walking the trail for well over 1000 years, to visit the shrine of St. James.  St. James is the patron saint of Spain, was one of Jesus´ buddies, and is known as St. James the Greater (to distinguish himself from some other poor sucker known as James the Less).  The shrine apparently contains James´  bones, which makes his resting city Santiago de Compostela the third most holy town in Roman Catholisim (behind Jerusalem and Rome).  Not being religious, I had no idea about any of this before starting the bike ride.  I was simply going on hearty recommendations from both my parents, and my sister who had biked the trail previously.  To top off the family connection I was riding the trail with my brother, Scott.

Scott.

The Trail

Meeting Scott at 8.00am on the morning we were to start in Pamplona, we were probably the least organised ´pilgrims´ ever to set foot (or bike) upon the trail.  We had pre-rented a couple of bikes from some organisation, and possessed a solitary address to pick the bikes up from.  I was expecting a little office with a friendly assistant ready to point us in the right direction and wish us well upon our journey.  I couldn´t have been more wrong.  The address took us to a freight forwarders warehouse, where we found our bikes.  In boxes.  After a brief bit of bike assembly we at least had our means of transport.  However, we had nothing else.  This meant a ride across to the other side of town to find a bike shop, pick up some bike bags (I have an aversion to the word pannier), spare tyres and that sort of thing that you really need when you are biking.  That kind of thing takes time, and it was 1pm before we finally set out.  The countryside is stunning, and the scenery with 35 degree temperatures easily distracted our thoughts from the fact that we had done zero training, knew nothing about bikes, had never even changed a tyre, and we had 800km ahead of us to ride.

Scott had spent months perfecting his ´Jesus´ look in prep for the Camino.

Spainish Countryside.

Shock and Awe

70km in and 6 hours later after traversing a mountain range, we reached our first resting town of Estella.  It seems appropriate to describe the feeling as Holy Shit.  I was not in a good place.  My body was in shock.  I could barely stand, my legs did not know what had happened and my brain had decided to go awol.  Almost throwing up, I did manage to keep down a beer and some food before passing out for the night.  The cool thing about the Camino is that every little town has dedicated Albergues - places where pilgrims can stay for the night for absurdly cheap prices (ranging from free to 7euros).  The not so cool thing about these Albergues are their checkout times.  Estella´s check out time was between 4.15 and 7.00.  This is in the a.m.  Breakfast was served between 5.30 - 6.30am and true to their word, the lights in our room switched on full at 5.30am on the dot.  I was thinking about Jesus Christ at this point in time.  7.20am, Scott and I left the Albergue, comfortably the last people to leave by a good 15minutes.  The pilgrims really take their walking seriously.

Appropriate.

Mum and Dad had given me some cycling gloves to take with me for the ride.  Mum also insisted I take some bike pants.  I refused, for the twin reasons: 1. you look like an idiot wearing bike pants, and 2. not wanting to lug them around the world for 6 months before using them.  The second my ass touched the seat on the second morning, I was rueing the decision not to lug.  Looking over at Scotts bike pants though, the first reason still stood true.

Bike pants.

 Passing Time

On the trail for up to 10 hours a day you come up with things to pass the time.  One of the first things to enter into our daily lives was the euro bet.  Basically one person would challenge the other an amount of euros to do a challenge.  If they refused the challenge would be reversed, and the challenger would have to do the task themselves.  The first challenge centered around a local farmers irrigation system.

20 euros on the line.

The water in the irrigation tank was of unknown depth, origin, and smell.  20 euros however had me taking an afternoon dip in it.

On the way down.

T

 Turned out it was quite deep.

Didn´t taste too good either, but hey, 20 euros is 20 euros.

Pilgrims

Pilgrims are a funny bunch.  They get up at crazy hours, walk for crazy hours, and have a general dislike for bikers.  Usually their aversion centres around the meetings you have on the trail.  Basically the only time you pass a pilgrim is on a downhill.  Going uphill over loose ground, you are too slow to even pass the walkers.  But on the downhill that all changes.  Where the pilgrims are treading cautiously, watching their step, and counting their blisters, we bikers are taking full advantage of the wheel, gravity, and front suspension.  This equates to a difference in speed of approximately 40kmph.  As you are approaching from behind, all the pilgrim hears is a few seconds of wheel on gravel before you are shooting past, with them only a distant memory.  

 Pilgrims.

Saying that, we did meet some pretty cool characters with some impressive stories.  Some of the more nuts ones were those that decided 800km was not long enough to walk.  We met one 65 year old man walking from Lisbon in Portrugal, up the coast, through the Camino in Spain and through to France.  That is a long way, a very very long way.  We also met a cyclist who was cycling to see St. James all the way from his home town in Rome.  I don´t know why he had to make the journey though, considering Rome is already ranked 2nd on the Holyness scales.

Me gusta.

The Rest

It took us 12 days to go the distance.  12 days that were very memorable.  We encountered 40 degree temperatures, 40 knot winds, thousands of pilgrams, sampled plenty of cervecas and tapas, saw our fair share of churches, got a little religous education, met some good people, encountered some classic locals, and at the end had the most strange looking tan lines courtesy of the cycle gloves.  The photos tell the story quite well though.

 

Wind, sucks.  

During this day, we were struggling to do 8kmph on downhill stretches.  If you stopped peddling, you would actually come to a halt, even when going downhill.

Scott figuring out how to change a tyre.

Lunch, every day: Pan, Chorizo and Queso.  Every day.  We would also have Chorizo most nights for dinner, and quite often for breakfast too.

Thank the lord.

Providence.

There always has to be one unexplained.

This time there are two.

Bulls.

The End

As it turned out, the day we got into Santiago de Compostella, MTV was putting on a free concert with Arcade Fire, Echo and the Bunnymen and the Temper Trap.  What a sweet way to finish the journey on, better than a church mass (although that was reasonably impressive too), and St. James does have a sweet church.

Next time, stories from Switzerland, Scotland, and the English countryside.  But for now, I´m off to Oktoberfest in Germany. 

Catch you soon,
Mark