Pilgrims progress
Leaving Porto Lots of these along the coast Mixed use walking/cycling path for lots of the route … And too many places to just sit and enjoy it Lovely towns for evening stops.. The path runs close to the sea most of the way And that’s farewell to Portugal as we’re nipped across to Spain… The hills begin… Some pretty seaside villages Hard going on the wet, sodden paths in the Spanish hills. Leaving Porto, our first 1km of cycling was virtually all down hill and a very steep hill at that, both brakes on full, until we joined the steady trail of Pilgrims en route...
Read MorePilgrims Progress
The Camino De Santiago de Compostela is one of the most popular pilgrim routes in the Christian world. It starts all over Europe in various places and is marked by a yellow sea shell symbol. We’d cycled some of the southern Spain route northward toward Santiago de Compostela earlier in the trip, but at Burgos we joined the main route that starts near the French border and heads West. Naturally this puts the price of everything up and makes accommodation harder to find and makes everywhere much much busier. We were heading the wrong way along the route as we began our climb into the...
Read MorePlain sailing
It’s very odd to be cycling in a relatively flat landscape surrounded by corn fields in bright sunshine yet be at around 800m. As you climbed up to the Plains (albeit in a taxi for some of it) you just don’t expect to get to somewhere flat at the top. It’s like a rolling Lincolnshire or the Canadian prairies with almost all the landscape being farm on top of the alps. It’s actually a bit dull, but it does mean when there’s a wind behind you you fly along – easily doing more than 20km each hour on some occasions, which for a fully loaded tandem isn’t...
Read MoreSlipping past the mountains…
We’ve been gradually climbing up to the Plains in Spain where apparently the Rain Mainly falls and reached 600m when disaster or a stroke of luck struck depending on how you look at it and Linda (who’s already headbutted a plate glass door in a hotel) managed to slip over in the bathroom of a hotel, bang her head against the shower screen and end up sitting on the loo, which may explain why, when she changed her toothbrush head she threw the new one away instead of the old one! Ever since returning from Korea Linda has had dizzy spells which amazingly vanished when we flew into...
Read MoreWellingtons footsteps…
Lisbon to Badajoz (Spain). 6 days, 256km, 1848m climb. Total 1569km 8200m climb We are always surprised at how a line on a map that separates two countries can make so much difference to lifestyles. Crossing from Portugal, where the restaurants closed around 9pm in Alves to Spain where they hardly opened before 9pm less than 15km away just seems so odd. And of course it’s much harder to get used to if you’re not used to the whole siesta and stay up late thing. We’d got used to eating at (for us) a normal time and getting to bed early so we could start cycling...
Read MoreEaster in Spain
Villemanrique to Portugal – 4 days 170km 742m climb Most of the cycle from Villamanrique was spent going in and out of Donana National Park which is huge and stretches along the Spanish coast near Seville. It’s a mixture of forest and wild sandy land dotted with trees and the cycle route varied from pristine tarmac to sand – something we’ve come to expect in Spain. It is beautiful, tranquil deserted and thankfully fairly flat and we thoroughly enjoyed our cycling. Easter is one big festival here with people dressing in their finest and every town and village having a...
Read More
Recent Comments