Thursday, 30 May 2019

Postcard from the rocky road to the end of the earth


Looking back at Santiago
So, after Lee completed his own pilgrimage and joined me in Santiago for a couple days of R&R, we set off on a bicycle trip from Santiago to Fisterra (Finis Terrae = End of the Earth) and then Muxia, where we had booked a few days in a 'casolita' recommended to me by a campanero from Spanish class.

We had booked this trip through an Irish company called 'Caminoways', and it was supposed to be similar to ones we had done in previous years, to Champagne and the Dordogne: great bikes, reservations in good hotels, luggage transported for us, and well-designed routes along scenic backroads or bike paths.

Our bikes in their secure parking area at
Spa Hotel FInisterra
Well, the bikes were excellent: sturdy hybrids with plenty of gears and wider, knobbly tyres for off-roads. Our luggage was transported as expected and was always waiting for us when we arrived. The hotels were a mixture of good, bad and ugly, and I'll get to that in a minute. The route, when I read through it, however, was clearly the Camino – the one meant to be walked, not biked. As far as I could tell, no allowance had been made at all for the sections of the Camino that were, shall I say, bicycle-unfriendly. With Lee's experience, we knew that this was going to be a problem, and indeed, almost as soon as we got out of Santiago we were on narrow dirt paths, going up or down steep, rocky inclines, being passed by the walkers who didn't need to lug heavy bicycles along the Camino. On top of that, the first day of the bicycle tour combined two days of the walking tour, meaning we were supposed to ride nearly 60 km on this difficult route.

Happy pilgrims in the water
This clearly wasn't going to work. So Lee quickly did some route planning and we set off on our own Camino. I was suffering from a chest cold, on top of which I wasn't in good shape and hadn't done much cycling because Santiago really doesn't lend itself to cycling. So I was pretty sure I wasn't up to the entire trip. After a few false turns and a detour past a particularly lovely spot along a river, complete with waterfalls, rapids, disused water wheels and pilgrims wading and washing their feet, we stopped at a cafe and I called up the taxi service Lee had carefully taken note of when he came through there earlier. At that stage my Spanish was okay to order the taxi, but of course I almost never understood what people replied! Anyway, eventually the taxi came: a nice new car with a trailer attached. The driver spent a fair amount of time strapping our bikes onto the trailer and then drove us, partly along the route we were supposed to cycle, to our first hotel. And charged us 50 Euros for the privilege. At that point I would have been willing to pay much more.


So he dropped us at our first hotel. It turned out to be one of the two pilgrim hostels in the little town (and I mean little) and the one Lee had already stayed in. So far not much was really the quality we were used to from previous 'self-guided tours' we had taken.

Still the little town was charming, the room clean, the bed firm and the water hot -- what more do you need?

The next day I felt better, Lee had mapped out a route that kept us close to but not on the Camino and off the main roads, and we had only about 30 km to do. Piece of cake. 

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