Me with my on-clearance-helmet, folding bike, and hiking backpack strapped to it on the Camino de Santiago
I´m alive! Sorry for my long absence from my blog, but what can I say? Life has been filled with adventures, and not much internet!
I am happy to report that I accomplished multiple things I have never done before. I biked almost 300 miles (470 km) across part of northern Spain, and I did it alone. I also did this with next to no training, using a folding bike, with little to no actual cycling gear (hence my pretty much ridiculous getup), and without much of a map or guidebook.
Map of the numerous routes of the Camino de Santiago throughout Europe
The Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) made this possible for me. What is the Camino? In a nutshell, it’s a collection of ancient pilgrimage routes throughoutEuropethat people have been walking for over 1000 years. The end destination of all these routes is the cathedral in the town of Santiago de Compostelain NW Spain where the apostle James is allegedly buried. Nowadays, many of these routes have been revived and along them are very low-cost shelters and services for modern day pilgrims. So, while the Camino used to be solely for spiritual purposes, it has grown to also attract tourists and fitness enthusiasts.
I chose to do part of the Camino del Norte (the northern route), beginning in Comillas, and ending in Santiago de Compostela. It was an amazing experience and left me wanting to do another route in the future, for a further distance and longer amount of time. The thought of biking that far sounded overwhelming to me, but in the end, it really wasn’t bad at all broken up over nine days–even despite the insane amount of mountains and hills I had to traverse, usually pushing my bike uphill for kilometers at a time! Below is a very approximate marking of the route I took:
A road sign marking the Way. (Wish they had all been this obvious!)
In the next couple of weeks I hope to post more frequent SHORTER blog posts for all you time-poor readers. This is my Reader’s Digest teaser version of my Camino de Santiago experience. For those of you who are intrigued and want more, keep checking back and you’ll get to read about my stories of things like me getting pulled over by the police (TWICE!), pictures of AMAZING scenery (northern Spain is GORGEOUS), videos, and other FAQs and info on how you too can do the Camino!
I am glad you posted about biking th Camino. We are planning a bike trip from Roncevalles to the compestela de Santiago over 12 days in May. Have been training for a few months.just getting up to 40 miles and working towards doing a few centuries before going to Spain. How did you train for the trip?
Hi Denise,
I’m hope my posts are helpful to you. My training beforehand was almost non-existent. I did (2) 30/35 km routes and then a few days of 5-15 km over the two weeks before I left. I didn’t really have any official training plan as my whole trip was organized pretty last minute. I was in decent physical shape already, but I didn’t even get my bike until 1 month before, so I was not an avid cyclist. Even with my minimal training, I still managed, however I did not go as far each day as other cyclists and struggled with some of the inclines on the Camino del Norte. I went knowing that I would be slow and wanting to take my time, so I was satisfied despite the lack of training. Your route (Camino Frances) is much flatter, so you will have a much easier time and it sounds like you’re doing plenty of training! Let me know if you have any more questions!
YOU ARE AMAZING!
Thank Tina, but you could totally do it!!!