3rd of October – we are already a month behind with our blog, but our Way of Saint James is not ending in Santiago. There is not this mysterious black hole, where all the pilgrims are walking to the end of their pilgrimage and then they disappear. We promised not to take an airplane back from Santiago as most of the pilgrims probably do once they’ve arrived at this destination. We continued our trip to show you can travel ten countries within Europe on bikes without stepping on an aircraft. But being already ahead of the readers I can tell you that this project is more demanding than we could…

5th September a new desire had risen overnight as yesterday at the tourist information we had already seen several leaflets about the region of Rio Miño/Minho being known for its hot springs, and it just made us longing to jump into one of them. There seemed to be a choice from very natural hot springs where people just were able to sit in hot pools right by the riverside, or other more sophisticated ones integrated in Spa and Wellness temples with hotel complexes etc. which mostly hurt my architectural eye. So we followed not only the wish to just sit in warm water, but also to satisfy the architect’s demands…

4th of September we changed our plans and decided not to take the Camino Portugues back to get to the north coast of Spain, because we had talked last evening to two bikers from Canada, who told us that they couldn’t advance well on the Camino Portugues due to the enormous number of pilgrims, and we had made the same experience in the other direction. There was an old railway track along the Rio Minho on the Portuguese side which was transformed into a bike path, which looked very tempting to us as following a river usually meant smooth slopes. We had breakfast in the town of Valença which had…

3rd of September it was intensely pouring in Santiago and the water covered all surfaces. We used the time to slowly pack our bags and get ready for the next adventure. As we already had spent three nights in this city we felt like we had to leave the crowd. The energy around us was not the welcoming get-together of pilgrims as we had expected, because they all dealt more with their departure than exchanging their experiences. Our attempt to get in touch with the Rotary Club of Santiago also reflected this perception, because we had tried to contact them way ahead already in August, when they responded that everyone…

2nd of September we had pre-booked a tour on the rooftop and tower of the cathedral and the weather was cloudy but stayed dry during the visit. The tour started at the museum where we already had the chance to look at some of the treasures of Santiago. There was a beautiful copy of the central figure of the Portico of Glory, which was the original entrance for the pilgrims and can only be seen with an extra ticket and reservation. But I was happy to be very close to this copy of the statue representing St James, being originally created by Master Mateo from 1168-1188. I had seen this…

31st of August it seemed like the early birds at dawn were singing at us from the way to Santiago de Compostela, and you could hear the first pilgrims pass already in the dark. There were starlings making their comments on the cable lines while we were packing our bikes for the last leg to the main goal of all pilgrims. We had a small breakfast at the bar where last night we had the convenience food warmed up from the freezer. The Italian who was also staying at our hostel must have forgotten his walking sticks, because I had seen a pair standing in the hallway and I told…

30th of August there was still light rain in the morning but it got slowly better and we took it slow with the breakfast. The first pilgrims came by and we recognised Veronica, who was missing her credential at Villafranca del Bierzo from far distance. This time she didn’t look happy for another reason, but was happy to see us. She had very bad blisters and couldn’t walk anymore in her shoes and tried to walk in her sandals, which was even worse in the rain. We tried to help her, but unfortunately I had given my las Compeed plaster to Moritz the other day. Modesta was getting her some…

29th of August the stormy weather made the clouds roll in with curtains of rain over the mountain ridge, and the windows were washed by the horizontal flying rain. It didn’t take us too long to decide that this will be our day off the bikes and we’d be ready to relax and catch up on our diary. Ivan had already left very early and Martina and Francesco were getting prepared to leave while we still had our breakfast, looking out the window into rain and fog. We wished them “Buen Camino” and had from then on the place completely to ourselves. The landlady Modesta could really be proud of…

28th of August Villafranca-del-Bierzo offers three churches to see of which one is a Romanic one. In the first church where we wanted to get our stamp we saw a girl going throuh her backpack, desperately searching her credential to get her stamp. She might have forgotten it at the last hostel. By coincidence this hostel was just beside the Romanic church which was supposed to open in ten minutes. So I had a look for her credential and there was one lying from Veronica. Unfortunately, she hadn’t written her telephone number in it. So I thought it was better waiting for her to come instead of missing her along…

27th of August we woke up early due to the pilgrims leaving during dawn. Something had changed compared to being in the dryness of the Meseta where our bikes and bags collected nothing but dust from the dirt roads. It was so dry that it was no problem to let the laundry hang outside even overnight. This morning a fine layer of morning dew had laid down on our hanged laundry and it was therefore not completely dry. Luckily there was a garden hose with which we could rinse our bikes, because the fine sand and dust started to find its way into the mechanics and caused grinding sounds you…