Camino – Places, Accommodation, Landscapes, Equipment

Day 2 saw us start the pattern of booking where possible that night’s accommodation at the first coffee or lunch stop, using booking.com and going direct to the Parador website. These are good quality hotels set up for the most part in historic buildings throughout Spain – worth a read about. I had been introduced to these by my Mum’s partner, and J&J had also stayed in them for a luxury night’s sleep when doing their previous camino hike. Having in reality only rarely stayed in hotels, usually preferring the cheaper self-catering options!, to actually then stay in one was fantastic.

Our next stop was at Zafra and when we saw that it had a Parador, and with a swimming pool, and following the lack of sleep of the previous night for the majority of the group, we decided to book 2 rooms with J&J willing to accept me into their max 3-bed room to save money. Following this example N&G said that they would also be happy to add me to their bubble (remember that) on occasion 🙂

Zafra Parador was luxury and wheeling the bikes through the middle of this historic building felt like breaking ‘keep off the grass’ rules from a british perspective. But this is where we were led to bring our bikes to the storage location.

It must be told however, that our bedroom was on the ground floor with windows onto the impressive square above, impressive enough to attract a large group of boys of all ages playing and shouting at the tops of their voices up to what must have been around midnight at least. I shut the windows and led awake waiting in vain to hear the voice of some adult like a hotel security guard telling them to sling their hook. That obviously never happened and I fell asleep at some point. The next morning my bedroom fellows had been oblivious as per the previous night, with Judith having the benefit of removing her hearing aids for sleeping, and Julian usually going out like a light. There’s abit of reconciliation work to do between myself and this laid-back, late aspect of Spanish culture.

The albergues presented their various challenges and particularly for light sleepers as already said – from heavy snoring & other noises not mitigated by ear plugs, to ‘fan on or off/windows open or shut’ wars. We were given disposable sheets and pillowcases to put on the plastic covered comfortable mattresses, in some cases the lower bunk headroom would suit a primary school child, and the same was also the case for the top bunk under the ceiling in Merida. But for me the nadir was having to sleep in this bunk, in a very small room housing us plus another 3 gentlemen, with the knowledge that I would have to climb down at least once to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. That underlying anxiety caused me to have to climb down and make 3 visits, each time hoping not to fall/rock the bunk/make any noise or have a watery accident 🤣 and wake anybody else up/draw attention to myself! Flexibility could have been shown, with other rooms available, but no, we had to fill up the bunks as we arrived. The only reconciliation work possibly to be done between incontinence and albergue sleeping rules was to get to the A Gudina one first and bagsy a lower bunk. This was achieved, and in fact we had a whole luxurious room-size corner of the single large dorm to ourselves.

Overall we stayed at 4 albergues in Almaden, A Gudina, Merida and Zamora, the paradors of Zafra and Puebla de Sanabria, 2 town houses – one in the medieval centre of Caceres – kerb appeal not immediately there cycling upto it after a long day!! see below -, a very comfortable contemporary building in university accommodation in the centre of Salamanca, and 3 very varied apartments – all really well kitted out and good value for 5 people – in the small former wool industry town of Bejar, the centre of the city of Ourense, and finally in Santiago de Compostela, approx 1 mile from the centre. The Santiago one was perhaps more ‘Spanish’ than set up just for tourists, and the Bejar one was in a typical non-touristy apartment block.

For me, the cities in the first half of the journey appeared all of a welcome sudden as oases out of the dry, sun-baked plateaus & plains, and their tree-lined, cool, thriving (perhaps with the exception of Bejar) centres were always a surprise given their landscape location. For most of the towns, the outskirts were busy roads lined with modern, large apartment blocks, giving no clue as to these centres. Salamanca was a highlight for me, with a feel more of a southern French town/small city. We had our only non-cycling day here, with a very informative & entertaining walking tour by a very knowledgeable history graduate.

The medieval cities came increasingly to full life after 5pm, with all ages hanging out in the beautiful squares, cafes and restaurants. The timescales for eating were abit of a challenge, not lining up with the cycling schedule, given a midday meal might only be served after 1:30pm, and evening meal from 8pm, but nevertheless we enjoyed several really good meals at low cost relative to prices in the UK. Green vegetables and even fruit were mostly lacking from menus which was a surprise. Some of the towns had festivals underway, so we caught some live music and dance.

My favourite meal was at a riverside restaurant as we arrived at Puebla de Sanabria – great hamburger and salad after a long ride, lovely location, friendly service, and the contemplation of cycling a few metres more to our Parador with swimming pool. The water was unheated, but really enjoyable after the dusty heat.

The landscape changed as we went through hilly country north of Seville to the dry plateau, before eventually climbing into the hills to Bejar. Now we had more deciduous trees, pastures and ferns, passing through the lovely tourist town of Hervas, and then Banos de Montemajor. The N-630 and then the N-525 heading west were great for road-biking – relatively empty due to their being superseded by the motorways, yet good surfaces with a large hard-shoulder. The motorways tended to not have their own service areas, with lots of exits leading to the cafes/restaurants on the N roads. This meant that there were plenty of places most days to aim for regular refreshment and battery charging stops.

Some stretches were on smaller cross-country roads; we took a risk and ignored the road closure sign on one of these and travelled many kilometres before evntually coming across the road building teams, who halted their diggers and equipment to let us pass. On one of these roads we came across Pete from Nottingham, who was walking this stretch of the camino. He told us that the day after he retired from teaching a few years previously, he set off and walked to Cadiz, southern Spain.

At one point our paths were crossed just ahead by a large family of deer jumping aross the road, which certainly would have been dangerous had we been 3 minutes further on, and at one point we had sight of 12 or so very large birds of prey – possibly Iberian Eagles.

Doing the same route but off-road our paths crossed a few times with 2 guys from Barcelona mountain-biking and a couple from the Netherlands and Ukraine respectively who had hired e-bikes in Seville. Unfortunately we didn’t catch sight of them in Santiago which was abit of a shame. Perhaps as a group, we had less conversations with others than if we had been solo or in a couple. This camino route did not seem busy.

Equipment-wise we had a range of bikes, P20 suncream, Julian doing his best with Google navigation, 2 punctures only, my and Nicola’s bikes, which if I had had a go at fixing would have no doubt taken 1.5 hours at least, but Julian and Graham quickly set to, extra gel seat, special cream and daily ibuprofen for undercarriage resilience. The motors did fantastically on the hills, and we did 3 high passes including 1085m, with mine in setting no. 2 ‘Tour’ and the lowest of my 8 gears easily enabling me to achieve them. Even topping up the battery for only 30 mins in a cafe really seemed to make a difference, at least to what the gauge showed. One thing to add is that my tyres were low in pressure and after about day 3 more air was pumped in, and what a difference to the freewheeling and general rolling of the bike. Something I will now take more seriously. And can we class the weather as empowering equipment? – blue skies and sunshine every day. Rather that and too hot than rain. Judith’s hearing aids worked well during the day and even better during the night when they weren’t in, enabling her to sleep like a baby.

The day before final arrival at our destination was another long cycling day, so that we would only have 30kms or so to get us to Santiago. This was a great decision as we made it late morning and cycled straight to the cathedral square, joining all the other mainly walkers and cyclists coming in from all over the place. Santiago de Compostela is in Galicia – part of green Spain, lots of rain apparently, wooded hill country, the road to which reminded me of some Devon landscapes. This is also worth visiting – beautiful squares, mazes of medieval streets, a great deal of joy constantly bursting out as people congratulated each other on reaching their goal. A wave of emotion swept over me as we came out from getting our official certificates, based on more subconscious non-specific rather than conscious feelings.

We, the Fellowship of the Chain Ring as Julian had coined it, had set off on the last day to a fitting and magnificent theme tune,

and we had all done it, I and my bike had done it. Hats off to JJ&G for that cycling without a motor.

I would like to end there, because I’m fed up of this one post now, but I have to mention the bike boxes because getting these and dealing with them happened the day after our arrival. Nicola and Graham found a bike shop which had 2 large boxes and offered a bike packing service which they happily paid for. Having sorted themselves out, this did not stop them now helping in turn J&J. This involved obtaining 2 further bike boxes from another bike shop; walking them (Julian and Graham) through the heaving Santiago streets to the cathedral where we had decided to attend the 7:00pm pilgrim mass, hoping to see the massive incense dispenser being swung; J&G standing in the cathedral queue with the boxes as if this was what everyone does, expecting (J) by force of will to be passed through. The Security team had other ideas and it was a decisive (I don’t think it it quite made derisory) ‘No’ . Undeterred (J), they moved away with the boxes, were ushered away from walking anywhere near another cafe on a main square, – what happened to the laid-backness – and ultimately hid the boxes in plain sight next to a cardboard recycling industrial bin, to then join us in the cathedral. An hour later we left the cathedral to find the boxes still where they had been left, managed to find another restaurant which could accommodate them as well as us and then eventually walked them (J&G) the 1.5 miles or so back to the apartment. J&J were off to the coast for another few days and the apartment owners very kindly allowed them to leave their bikes and bike boxes in their storage until they returned.