It was ‘chalk and cheese’ compared with yesterday’s ride. Shorter, drier with reasonable hillage. All together a fine day.

We met the Italian Mob today. They stayed at the same hotel as us last night and we caught them up on the first hill of the day. To be honest, straight after one’s breakfast it was a bit of a slog. Karen and I had warmed up with the odd hint of perspiration, while one of these guys was soaked! I think he had an E-bike as well! We stopped to offer to take a photo of them all, while preparing to take our own shot at this summit. They were all very jolly at this offer, and insisted they took ours.

And the summit sign, the first of three sets of rollers up to and down from 1300m:

At O Cebreiro we passed some traditional round houses, some were thatched. The design of these dates back before the Romans!

Largest of all the pilgrim bronzes to date. About 3m high.

Interestingly he was not sporting the gourd on a stick and opted for the gourd on a belt.

The large pilgrim has a nice view:

Some Eurovelo signs are now popping up. Eurovelos are the long distance cycle routes that run all over Europe. EV3 is 5300km long, starting in Norway and ending in Spain, at Santiago de Compostela. That’s handy, as that’s where we are headed for this leg. It does have odd route choices at times, preferring to send bikes down rough steep tracks as opposed to nice smooth roads.

This is Alfonso the 9th. A small statue just before our digs in Sarria. While sporting a large sword and good sized crown he does not look too happy with his lot in life. I suspect he ordered a 200m castle with outlying houses and was most upset to realised his ‘mm / m’ typo when he received the castle from Amazon. Alfonso was the King of Leon (province) and died in Sarria while pilgriming to Santiago de Compostela.

Now that’s a pizza. Beer is included solely for the purpose of scale, its a very large beer. Our well-earned lunch after two days of hill climbing.

Today’s ride was 36.5 beers! (87km, 1507m climbing).

All started well, climbing through the village and soon out onto the empty smooth roads.

We reached the Iron Cross, the highest point on the Camino. A place where people write messages to lost loved ones. Lots of messages around. People carry stones there to symbolise leaving all your burdens behind. We left a couple of stones, but only small stones as we only had small burdens.

Bikes parked up for lunch:

Nice view part way down the steep descent – we descended 1000m over 10-12kms:

Pic of me whizzing down:

Starting to see a few vineyards now. This pic was taken on the western side of Ponferrada, a large and modern-looking city:

Very nice clear dual language sign. Now bear in mind we have rarely come across a dual sign before, apart from an odd menu, so this seemed very special. We did not check the translation at the time, even though the English version seemed a bit odd – it would not have mattered really as it means steep hills and we had got the gist of that already.

Spot Karen slogging up this ‘nice’ hill.

Going down an ‘outstanding strong’ (aka steep hill):

Karen’s shadow pic:

Now this picture turned out to be more ‘interesting’ to us than we first thought. Part of a concrete viaduct motorway had collapsed last year and was under repair. The motorway did not look very old.

We soon hit a “no entry, except residents” sign paired with a “no entry for cycles” sign. We looked at the map and this involved a long detour down a steep narrow road. So knowing better, we stuck with our nice new road and plodded on. Following a good slog up some stiff hills we arrived at a point where our N road ran alongside the Motorway. Well it should have. Our way was barred, the road was closed with two layers of barriers. It was much later, during post ride beverages that we realised that our N road had temporarily been adopted as the motorway due to the collapse of the motorway (see pic above). So we did a 180, rode back down a 9% hill and turned off for our alternative route. Well the nice road turned into a track, not so bad, then a rough track, then a very rough track. Oddly 1/2 way along we were passed by a Golf GTI! Karen mentioned that was a good sign of there being a road up ahead. Track got smaller, rougher and we were left looking up a very steep hill, I reckon about 25% which, for good measure, was covered with loose wet stones. At this point its fair to say some of the team’s morale was ebbing. So we got the whole team together and had a nice team building chat, a few nibbles of sugared fruit and nuts then put our best foot forward closely followed by our second best and pushed on. I just about made it to the top, where Karen’s road prediction had come true, there was indeed a very nice road. Then I nipped back down to assist my clairvoyant getting up the nasty hill. From there it was up and up, then up some more. Hardest slog so far. And in the rain!

On entering our target town at 5.30pm (a very long and late day for us!) I spotted another fine bronze pilgrim. Not sure if I mentioned before but most seem to carry a gourd containing their water. Odd place to carry it on a stick, and they all seem very small. Dangling stick gourds probably have some symbolic meaning – feel free to comment below if you know more about this meaning (we’re too tired after this long ride to look it up!).

This graph says it all for today’s ride:

All’s well that ends well. We had a super meal with a bottle of red then a 10 hour kip!

Today’s post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning an Aussie couple we befriended last night. Steve and Anne-Maree hail from Brisbane, Australia. A lovely couple we met over dinner last night at our digs in Rabanal del Camino – down-to-earth characters, a great laugh, and easy company as we swapped stories about our camino journeys. We hope to see them again somewhere along the way.

We left Leon as they were hosing down the streets! Yes instead of using a broom, they had a preference for a fire hose. We were soon in countryside again, weaving our way through tiny villages that always had a relatively large church compared with the size of the village, just like back in the UK. Note the stork nest. There were a few storks mailing around in there.

Soon it was time for our main breakfast (we had stopped earlier for a quick coffee and tortilla. The tortilla was a freebie! Total cost E2.80, bargain!).

Main breakfast, after 30kms of riding:

This cockerel was wandering around the gardens of the cafe, announcing dawn at 11am!

This is me going into Astorga! Astorga is a walled city in a basin, meaning we had to ride hills to get into and out of it!

Some brilliant murals in Astorga:

Hills are all around us now.

Some roads were OK:

Some roads were fairly rough today. The gravely camino on the right was not a good option for us.

We dropped into this very nice village that had this beautiful long stone medieval bridge. They were all set up for jousting contests just to the left. The jousting history dates back to 1434 when a Leonese knight held a tournament and challenged all men of equal rank who wished to cross the bridge.

A cathedral in Astorga:

We had to take this pedestrian bridge to get across a railway. I noted that the walking pilgrims hobbled more when travelling up the bridge.

Shot of Karen using the rear Garmin lamp, taken after our climb out of Astorga.

Hills getting closer, the roads getting rougher and the mercury is climbing:

Our Scooby snack lunch, part of our life on the road. A picnic lunch means we can stop anywhere.

A nice bell tower, very common design here.

Came across this odd looking pilgrim near our digs.

At the end of the day, we conducted a chain service. We are using a lube that has wax suspended in it called ‘Rock and Roll’. This was a tad overdue, I would normally service about every 2 to 3 days. Old cart was a convenient seat. Another aspect of our life on the road.

Today was 72km, about 45miles, with some 650m of climbing. There is much more to come. We have been deliberately easing ourselves into readiness for some much harder riding, and it’s coming up!

Some people use calories to measure the energy used, but Garmin (bike computer) and Strava (online sharing app) never agree. I’m not being fussy here, picking up on a 1% difference. No, they are often 30% different. Before somebody asks, yes I had ensured all base data is the same. One or both apps are rubbish. So I have an app that calculates the number of beers earned. Today was a 24 beer ride. Now that is something I can relate to. As of writing this blog I have consumed about 2 beers in the bar where I scribe, and like those impending hills, there are more to come.

Yesterday we had large flocks of pilgrims, today they were fairly thin on the ground. How odd.

Today’s ride was cold, flat, but with a good tail wind. Rain started just as we entered Leon, then thought better of it and stopped.

It was so cold today they wrapped the trees up in quilts:

An albergue (hostel) sporting a nice mural.

Really nice mural down a small side street.

More overcast today, soil changed from lime stone to more clay like.

Very quiet roads (1 pilgrim here, rugged up against the cold)

Karen doing 30kph about to overtake me.

We saw cows! The first ones. Karen was very excited and rode back to take a pic.

Bikes getting rather dusty now.

View from our digs in Leon.

Approaching Leon Catherderal from side street, another gothic-style cathedral.

It’s very big! Nice flying buttresses (not shown here). Spot the Kiwi!

This is a view of the middle door of the three you can see above. There is a lot going on here. Top scene appears to be a standard big cheese being served upon by a couple of angels and others kneeling in obedience. But my eye caught the lower scene of the two above the door. There was so much detail in these marvellous carvings.

Zoomed in view of the LH side. This side looks rather nice, a bit of praying going on, bird on a harp banging out some tunes and a bit of dancing to the right. A few angels milling about serving drinks I think. Altogether, a bit heavenly I suppose.

Zoomed in view of RH side. No so good over here, it’s a completely different kettle of fish. Looks like demons boiling up people (presumably non repentant sinners, maybe some heathens in the mix) and passing them along to the 3 large demonic diners further to the right. No cutlery here; it’s finger food for these boys.

From the cloisters, showing the flying buttresses.

A reminder that we are pilgrims.

We stayed at a dated and cluttered hostel. If you like ornaments and knick knacks, this is the place for you. A comfortable stay though and the hostess was very nice and secured our bikes in her garage. A delightful lady who explained that May was very busy with the Camino, then business drops off a cliff as the pilgrims avoid the hotter weather.

Today started with picking our way through a huge trail of pilgrims. We have never seen so many, it was as if they had all been congregating for a few weeks and hit the trail to get in our way! But we had cycle bells (in order to comply with Spanish regulations)! So we tried advanced warning with a few ding a lings, then opening up with salvos of rings, but generally the pilgrims took no notice. So I developed a new technique of approaching in stealth mode and blasting out a very loud and firm “HOLA”. This did the trick and often led to a minor scramble to get out of our path. Here is one view of the hoard below, in this instance we were using the road. So normal Hola volume was used to encourage our fellow pilgrims in their toil as we sailed by.

This section of the Camino is often described as dull and boring to walk – it’s a largely flat and shadeless route with long straight stretches that must seem never-ending for walking pilgrims. But by bike it was lovely flying along with our tailwind friend. I also had fun overtaking a gaggle of e-bikes, a rather unfriendly bunch – not responding to an “Hola!”

At one point we met a touring biker going in the opposite direction. She pulled over to engage in a chat. She expected us to be Dutch as she had only met Dutch cyclists en route. We had met none. Then as if by magic two more tourers tipped up and yes they were Dutch. They started taking in rapid hoot with the initial tourer and I did not have a clue what they were saying. Eventually, we were re-engaged to the ‘chat’ when the conversation turned to bicycle pumps. Here I was on firm ground as Karen carried a full size Walmart ‘Joe Blow’ (thanks again Gary). They found this very odd, but inside I ridiculed their tiny pumps and took comfort that we would have the last puncture laugh as we easily inflated out tyres while he used a mouse sized pump. Then at least another 3 tourers rode by. Probably Dutch. It’s the most cyclists we’ve seen so far.

Remember Christian, nice French chap, well we met him again today. He looked a tad tired so I guess his battery may have been low. Anyway here is an action shot, via my rear radar cam of Christian and Karen.

Some more action shot from radar cam:

For me, this is the money shot.

Around 1/2 way we found a small container-cafe in the middle of a field. We had our coffee stop there. Met somebody from Norwich. That’s me at the bar preparing to enter Spanish mode.

This is me entering the Province of Leon:

Lunch stop. Nice and peaceful.

Warming up nicely.

A stroll around Sahagun and we found this artwork..

Bloke with a pitch fork.

Big bloke on small horse, possible mobile shepherd or hockey player.

El rambler meets el farm lass

From last night – me and my greens. A menu del dia (menu of the day) is common along the camino; a reaonably priced 3 course meal with bread and wine. I was a bit stuck on what to go for on the first course menu and went for greens, well the best ever greens as they were accompanied with lots of bacon bits! I’m also looking happy as I’ve sampled a couple of local beers and the majority of the red wine that came with dinner. The menu said wine or water, I expected a glass each and we (I) got a bottle of Malbec.

We are pedalling pilgrims and we are collecting our stamps to prove it.

Setting off from Burgos was rather a ‘dodge the pilgrim’ game. We got going at 0830 and passed many on their journey along the super nice cycle ways of Burgos and the polarising rough tracks of the Camino. The track…

We had pre-routed to avoid the tracks in favour of the billiard-table-smooth roads, but in some places these could not be avoided unless one takes a very long diversion. So we suffered in silence; ok we moaned a bit but not too much. Taking the track was a great way to meet other pilgrims, and it was enjoyable to exchange a cheery “Buen camino” (“Good way” – wishing each other safe travels) with our fellow pilgrims.

During this quiet ordeal we met Colin (normal)- a Kiwi. Easy to spot – the only bloke in shorts. Being a Kiwi, Karen and Colin had a good chin wag while we pushed our bikes. Pushing was harder than cycling, so after a 5 min chat we were off again. This is Colin and I:

We also met Christian (normal) today. A rather nice French chap who is ‘cycling’ on his electric bike. To be fair he did explain that his bike was an old model and only had a range of 20km, so only used electric to go up the hills. He showed us his map that had a few road alternatives and insisted Karen take photos of all the maps. These will come in useful in order to dodge the rough tracks. Here is Christian and I. He is rather wrapped up, but it was very warm.

Further down the road we found the derelict convent of San Anton. Shot of me approaching, about to shout “stopping” to warn Karen I was pulling over.

On leaving the Nun house I took these shots of a biker following me from my rear radar cam! I have to say, I’m very chuffed at how they turned out.

We came across a partly disused canal lock system. This is the view of the disused bit, gates long gone.

And the bit still in use today.

General pics of the super lovely views. Easy pedalling with a light tail wind. Marvellous. Also some steep descents, in the order of 15%.

The Team. Happy we are.

Today is our rest day, we spent it wandering around the large city of Burgos. Our overall impression is that it is clean, has many beautiful old buildings, has lots of bronze statues, has many restaurants, the restaurants being run by rather surly waitresses who do not seem to enjoy their job.

The bronze art work is scattered about the city, on the main drag and tucked away up side streets. Very high quality work on each one. Here are some examples.

The Tired Pilgrim in the Cathedral Plaza. He looked a tad more than tired to us!

El Cid; Jeff and a local lass; a smithy; Francisco de Vitoria, a Spanish philosopher:

A chap reading a paper (a tribute to the press); Los Gigantillos (and Jeff); roasting chestnuts; child dancer and his teacher:

LH Pic below shows an evolution of man. RH pic is one of many statues depicting tough warriors using the heads of their enemies as foot rests.

Old Moorish city walls:

Example of a wall mural:

The gothic cathedral Burgos is known for, and the Arco de Santa Maria:

We became Pilgrims! This is one of our official Pilgrim passports. We need to get these stamped every day in order to get (pay for) an official certificate at Santiago de Compostela on completion of our bicycle pilgrimage. No, we are not cheating. A walking pilgrim needs to complete at least 100km in order to qualify and we cyclists need to do 200km. We will be doing 540km.

We celebrated our new status with a beer and nibbles. My beer turned out to be a Scottish brew! Very good it was. Karen’s was more local, from Madrid. The first craft beer we have seen in Spain – it cost more than most of our meals, but was worth it.

Then more wandering. Most locals are rugged up against the ‘cold’ weather – most of the time we are finding it to be warm enough. The following pic contains the same number of trees at that in yesterday’s post from Ona (- this is a hint to those still working out that puzzle).

A panoramic from the Castle:

Looking towards the west from the Castle, the direction of our pedalling tomorrow. Rest over, back to some graft tomorrow.

A tip for future posts – if you scroll to the bottom of the comments section below, you can choose to receive a notification when we add a new post. Thanks for reading!

Yesterday evening we found a large stone key. We didn’t see the lock.

Some art stuff from our evening stroll around Ona:

Quiz. How many trees are in this pic?

A later start to the day today following a very late dinner last night as the restaurant didn’t open until 2045! Then we need to await to retrieve our bikes from the hostel/restaurant’s bottle store across the plaza at 0800. It was an odd storage arrangement parking up against bar stock, but it was secure.

A fair bit of climbing today across our 60km ride – about 800m of climbing . However, the climbs arrived in more welcoming packets so took a lower toll on the legs and other body parts. We stopped off for a bar lunch comprising of similar micro lunches as described previously.

The scenery opened up to crop lands, and we cycled alongside a via verde for a fair bit and caught a glimpse of a fella we met yesterday (not reported in blog) whizzing along on his e-bike. The via verde is a gravel track and more suited to a mountain bike or walking. We prefer the empty roads. The roads are very well surfaced. The cars were faster today, but still giving plenty of room in passing. Also more trucks on the road now the working week has started again.

The hillsides are scarred with lots of what I’m fairly sure is limestone, this appears white and little grows in it.

We travelled through many villages today, all with very little sign of life. We were lucky to find one place open. Most appear deserted – maybe we are passing through too early in the morning and/or perhaps people are travelling out of the village for work. There are also a fair number of 1/2 built houses or flats that have just been left to the elements.

Some more pics of the lovely scenery. The last one shows the via verde running parallel with the road we rode.

We are now in Burgos, a big city, for two days. Yes, we have a day of rest already! So tomorrow we will have a nose about.

As you will gather from the title, today saw us battling up some steep climbs. We had one very long one that averaged around 6%, some much steeper. One was impossible for us and we had to push for a bit.

Very impressed with the car and lorries giving a large passing gap on their overtaking. Most got into opposite lane, this was very comforting indeed.

My Garmin radar works very well giving me lots of warning of an approaching vehicle. No false alerts, so very reliable indeed. Motor bikes were a bit of a pain to be honest, roaring passed at about twice the speed limit and passing unnecessarily close.

A bit on food (for Gayle)…….

Below is the smallest muffin I have ever seen.

For lunch we have stopped off at bars and consumed a few of the pre-prepared nibbles on offer. Here is what we had today, with two cokes this was only 11 Euros, tip top.

Just after the scoff above we came across an artist, ‘ohh that looks interesting’ we thought and pulled alongside to engage with Pablo. Just upon starting the convo, a bloke in a beat up 4×4 wanted us to move to get passed, so we moved forward, but he just nudged forward – blank face, obviously communicating with us through mind transfer, similar to Boris I think, come to think of it he looked like one. Eventually we twigged he wanted to park in front of Pablo. I wish I could have snapped the moment when Pab’s realised this bloke was parking directly in front of his scene. Arms thrown up, lots of rapid fire Spanish, Pabs was not very happy, we had never seen him like that before. Anyway the bloke moved forward to within a inch of the car behind. Here is Pabs post this event.

Some general pics of today’s surroundings – smooth roads up the valley, surrounded by trees; a remote church atop an interesting hill; the ‘tabletop’ hill we had in our sights for several hours as we climbed up the valley; lots of poppies dotted the fields as we moved from gorges and hills and into agricultural lands; we rode through 4 tunnels today – this one was 580m long, the others were each less than 100m; looking down the valley we have climbed up from Guenes, our rest stop last night.

Fairly early on we took three attempts to get to our route, in this instance Garmin was correct but wanted to route us along some very rough stone track – top RH pic – so I doubled-back on to a steep sealed road that offered no suitable way through – bottom RH – so we were left with a grassy track which got us on track – LH.

The summit was finally reached following a fair bit of graft. We did about 1150m elevation gain today that shows we had a bit of up and down along the way. A total of 78km today.

Here is the elevation profile:

Along the route we came across this little grotto on the side of the road:

It didn’t look much really and I guess most motorised vehicles would just whizz by, but by this time we were looking for regular rests to breathe a bit of life back into weary legs. So we stopped off. Walking through the ‘cave home’ we found a small hamlet of grottos. Amazing ‘find’, as I scribe I realise our photos are a bit thin on this one. But there was a cut in the hill, small stream running with cave homes on each side, about 8 or so. Here’s a shot of a local boy.

Arriving at Ona, a lovely village with narrow cobbled streets and very tidy.

Nice view from lodgings, this time the view is real! (a hint for those trying to solve the riddle in yesterday’s post – ie Jemma) – a monastery.

Once on Spanish land we first said our goodbyes to Dave. This is Dave.

We were then waved through customs, while rather satisfyingly they had pulled all the motor bike riders up for a frisk. We then followed some very nice cycle paths alongside the harbour entering the city of Bilbao. It was very quiet on the roads and through the streets, making us grateful for arriving on a Saturday morning.

We Hola’d many cyclists, who, in the main returned with a Hola, or some other phrase that we took to be friendly encouragement. This bit had a nice wider shoulder.

This was a stiff hill, but look to the right! Yes the pedestrians had an escalator!! Never seen than before. I suspect funded by our past EU funding.

We took a detour to see the outside of the Guggenheim Museum. Nice building.

Spotted this little fella outside, crawling out of the mist. All very War of the Worlds but without that screaming kid.

It ate these people shortly after the pic was taken.

If you like old doors this is the pic for you. We came across this old building in the town we are staying at, Rather taken by these well maintained doors.

We took a stroll down to the town to get some lunch from a rather lively bar. Karen opened with an order for a beer, 2 small sandwiches and a bottle of water, 5Euro!! Coming from the boat where I could swear that they slipped the decimal point to the right, this place was welcomingly cheap. Beer was tip top as well.

A 43km ride took us from the ferry to the town of Guenes where we’re stopping for the night. It’s partway up a valley, and we can see the hills that we’ll be facing tomorrow – we better fuel up well tonight!

We have to say the boat was in very good order, apparently only being built about 3 years ago. Room was fab, and view amazing! Can you spot what’s a bit odd?

We met up with Dave again, while strolling around the deck, then later in the bar.

Goodbye Blighty! I think the chap in red spoilt this pic.

Karen took some exercise to limber up for the riding to come. Lots of exercise machines on the deck.

Nice shot across the pond.

As we passed between Brest and Lile d’Ouessant we spotted a few light houses. There are 13 in the area and the one below, La phase du Stiff, being built in 1695 is the oldest.

Here is another, Le phase de la Jument, a mere youngster starting life in 1904.

Pic from boat gives you an idea of our route from Portsmouth to Bilbao.

Evening was topped off with beer and food as usual, big day tomorrow. However, the cruise did give use time to reflect that we really wouldn’t want to be stuck on a boat for days at a time and the open road on two wheels is for us.

We set off at 0715 in soo much time for our 1001hr train at Preston. Previously during our Prep Phase we had preloaded the route which Garmin had selected for us to travel from Grimsargh to Preston. With Garmins preprogrammed and panniers locked and loaded, we set off. Garmin had selected a nice route which I would imagine compares well to an urban Somme. Lots of broken glass and rough tracks. The twenty minute ride took some 40mins, but little did we know as we arrived at Preston that the evil Garmin had more in store for us later.

Anyway, we soon carb loaded at the station – I took a sausage and cheese roll from a most cheery operative (sorry Gayle, I’m talking about food!) and Karen took the cheese and egg option.

We engaged with the train operatives to make them aware we were bikers, and they were super nice, pointing out the location of the bike storage area and the loading procedure.

We were both very impressed with that service. We had prebooked our bikes, at no cost. Train tips up, we stow bikes – all very stress free.

Arriving in Euston (London) I had pre-briefed Karen that the cyclist is one of the most hated beings on earth here, and to be on guard for twats. So again, with the Garmins preprogrammed we set off for Waterloo station. The Gremlins had other plans. We had two hours to travel 4km, that’s heaps of time, a snail could do that. We had provisioned about 20 minutes, bearing in mind London is busy. The start was not good as the Gremlins pointed us in the wrong direction at the off! We followed the ‘route’ for some 20 mins, lots of turns, before we became suspicious of our guide. To seal the deal the Gremlin suddenly reversed the whole route and starts to demand we do a 180. At this point we reverted to Karens phone using google. This worked well, and we took a direct route to Waterloo. During this rather stressful phase of the ride Karen warned me that I was about to be undertaken by a delivery cyclist. I nipped that in the bud and advised him that he was a twat and left it at that. Well he finally overtook us and it took a fair bit of will power not to educate him on the basics. That’s just London – everyone in a rush, apart from declaring a pedestrian a wanker I think I did very well with that leg.

We could not prebook our bikes on the Waterloo to Portsmouth leg, it was first come first served. So after being told by a Train operative that it was leaving from platform 16, another one told us is was actually 12. So we rushed over to find the cycle car already ½ full. Strolling up the train we found the second and final cycle car empty. We filled it.

Train to Pompey was slow. Setting down at Pompey we trusted our Gremlins and they actually worked fine this time. We queued with many motor cyclists and met our first cycle tourer Dave (normal) – he is cycling from Spain back up through France. Nice bloke.

Boarded boat, bike tied up by crew to lashing rail. We have a very nice cabin.

Dinner was very good and it gave me an opportunity to hone my French with the waiters.

After beer, wine, and lots of very nice scoff it was time to rest for day 2.